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The Curtain of Steel 



The - 

Curtain of Steel 



BY THE AUTHOR 
OF 

IN THE NORTHERN MISTS 
GRAND FLEET DAYS 
NAVAL INTELLIGENCE 



NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






v, 



PREFACE 



HERE we have a Long Naval Film, in Six 
Reels, and every single one of the pictures 
is photographed from life. 

Excepting, of course, the shortest reel of the six, 
the one which is called The Curtain Raised ; that, 
happily, is untrue, every word of it, and even the 
setting in which the story is told is pure fiction. 
But I put it in as the best I could do to try and 
show what would happen if there wasn't any British 
Navy. I know it is rather a feeble effort, but you 
can let your own imagination do the rest. 

But while all the other pictures are really quite 
true, the portraits are all of them faked. I want 
to make this very clear indeed, because there are 
lots of people who when they read a book of this 
kind think they can recognise their own photo- 
graphs. Well, they needn't think so here, because 
all the faces that appear on the film, like all the 
names, are " made up out of my own head.'- 



Preface 

Of course, it is impossible, I suppose, to avoid 
altogether making what is termed a " composite 
portrait " when trying to invent the characters in 
a book ; memories of different people one has known, 
traits and features picked out one here and another 
there and pieced together must inevitably furnish 
the raw material, and the source of such separate 
constituents may sometimes be recognised. But, 
taking the completed characters as they stand, 
nobody means anybody — to put it elegantly and 
tersely. 

There is only one part-exception where one 
man's face stands out rather more clearly from 
the others with which it is blended ; it is the face 
of a good man, and I hope I have written nicely 
about him. 

So now we know exactly where we are, and let's 
begin ! 



VI 



CONTENTS 



I. THE LOWERING OF THE CURTAIN 



II. THE CURTAIN IN PLACE 



III. THE CURTAIN PROVES ITS STRENGTH 

IV. THE MATERIAL OF THE CURTAIN 



V. THE CURTAIN RAISED 
VI. KEEPING THE CURTAIN DOWN 



PAGE 

3 

55 
107 

149 
187 
205 



vix 



I . The Lowering of the Curtain 



I. The Lowering of the Curtain 



AN order from the Admiralty — brief, swift, 
and secret ; so secret that even now, so 
long a time after, I do not know whether 
it came in the form of a wireless message in cypher, 
or as a single code word transmitted by letter and 
intimating that a certain secret envelope was to be 
opened, or whether some special messenger came 
speeding down by the express, with the destinies of 
nations tucked away in his coat pocket next to his 
cigar case. In one way or another the order came, 
the order which was to loose the great ships from 
their moorings and send them, squadron by squadron, 
up the Channel and round the Forelands, then to 
North and North-west for hundreds of miles, with 
an unknown fate ahead of them in the months and 
the years that were to follow ; making for their 
base, which at that time was but the raw material 

3 



The Curtain of Steel 



of a base, a mere harbour just as nature made it, 
so little were we prepared for war or expecting it ; 
without shore fortifications to defend the anchorage, 
without nets to protect the harbour entrances, 
without minefields to hold up a possible enemy. 

There is no need for any mystery-mongering about 
the identity of this embryonic base : all the world 
knows that Scapa Flow in the Orkneys was the 
objective for which the Grand Fleet made when it 
quietly disappeared from its South Coast ports that 
portentous July day. 

Well was it for Britain that she possessed that 
magnificent natural war-harbour far up in the 
North ; for the East Coast of both Scotland and 
England, spared from fierce inroads such as the 
wild breakers of the Atlantic have made on the 
Western and Southern shores, tearing with their 
terrible white fingers at the heart of the land, re- 
mains whole and unbroken by any considerable 
harbour from the Pentland Firth to the Straits of 
Dover. Only this distant island anchorage exists, 
a tiny inland sea embraced by the encircling isles 
of the Southern Orkneys ; yet so amazingly well 
adapted in every imaginable respect for the needs 
of a fleet in time of war that one might almost think 
it specially designed and given by God for the pro- 
tection of our country against a foe on the opposite 
shores of the North Sea. 

Here, then, the Fleet arrived, unknown to every- 
body in the kingdom except a very few, and those 
mostly at the Admiralty. All that the generality 

4 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



of people knew was that the ships which they had 
seen the day before had mysteriously and silently 
disappeared, and that the local festivities were 
suddenly cut short. 

But while people were still wondering what had 
become of the ships, the Fleet had arrived at Scapa. 
There it anchored, and awaited events. 



It was the lowering of the Safety Curtain. From 
the moment when the cables rattled out through 
the hawse-holes, sending a cloud of the dried mud 
of Weymouth Bay into the air of the Orkneys, 
England was safe, happen what might. 

Secure in their seats in front of the curtain, 
and blissfully ignorant of what was happening 
behind the scenes, the audience chattered idly, 
and wondered in a spirit of complete detachment 
what turn the great European play would next 
take. 

Behind the curtain the awful conflagration was 
already ablaze. Not yet had it spread to the 
stage. Though burning fiercely, there still seemed 
hopes that it might be kept under. Men were 
trying to quench it with little buckets of water ; 
others were merely talking. And few realised how 
great the danger was. Those few who did realise 
it, however, knew that the whole of the theatre 
was one mass of dry rot, just tinder ready to blaze 
up wherever a chance spark should fall, so that 

5 



The Curtain of Steel 



the only question was how soon the whole would 
be afire. 



When the ships received that quiet summons for 
their voyage northwards they had but barely dis- 
persed from the great Naval Review at Spithead. 

At the time when this function was held it was 
considered the great naval event of the year — so 
unable is poor purblind humanity to see an inch 
beyond its nose. The great event of the year, 
when all the time those ghastly fires were smoulder- 
ing and the moment for their bursting into frightful 
flames was even now very, very close at hand ! 

Yet if we can forget for a moment how very wise 
we now are after the event, and eliminate our sense 
of proportion, the Spithead Review really was a big 
thing. There had been several great naval reviews 
in the same place before, but never anything at all 
approaching this for magnificence on the grand 
scale. The lines of ships were so long that from 
even the most favourable position it was not pos- 
sible to see them from end to end. And there 
were many of these lines, comprising ships of all 
classes, from great Super-Dreadnoughts to the tiny 
specks of destroyers seen in the distance. It really 
was a most impressive and inspiring scene. 

A thoughtful naval officer made the remark: 
" It is a pity that the Kaiser isn't here to see this. 
No doubt he has a paper knowledge of the size of 
our Fleet, but if only he could actually be here and 

c 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



see for himself with his own eyes, he would never 
dream of the madness of going to war with Eng- 
land ! " 

"The Kaiser isn't here, but his eyes are," was 
the reply of his still more thoughtful companion, 
4 he has many pairs of eyes, everywhere, and many 
of them here, beyond all shadow of doubt. The 
Eyes will go back to Germany and make the Kaiser 
see what they have seen. He will not make war 
on us ! "' 

But neither of these two thoughtful officers was 
quite thoughtful enough. 

Perhaps, though, they were right, so far as their 
reflexions went. Maybe the Eyes did go back to 
Germany and make the Kaiser see what they had 
seen ; and possibly he came to the conclusion that 
it would be madness to provoke to war the nation 
that possessed such a mighty Fleet as this. That 
would partly explain his rage and bitter disappoint- 
ment when England decided to step into the con- 
flict, not waiting for him to say whether she should 
or should not fight. 



4 

You must understand that to the average naval 
officer this review at Spithead was an appalling 
weariness of the flesh, a period of the most intense 
boredom, and when it was over a great sigh of 
relief and thankfulness went up from every single 
ship in the Fleet. 

7 



The Curtain of Steel 



I daresay you will find it difficult to believe this, 
especially if you happen to be one of those many 
who came off from the shore to take part in the 
innumerable minor festivities on board the various 
ships — tea-parties, luncheon-parties, small dances, 
and the like. 

To your eyes everything was so delightful, from 
the moment you stepped into one of " those dear 
little steam-boats " under the guidance of " a per- 
fectly sweet little middy " who issued his orders 
with all the dignity and responsibility of a full 
admiral. 

If only you could have seen those same dear 
little steam-boats a few weeks later, with a three- 
pounder gun mounted for'ard and the tiny cabin, 
in which clean bright-hued flags had been spread 
above the cushions for you, now chock-a-block with 
ammunition, rifles, arid other horrid gear of war ! 
While the snotties in command, looking grimmer 
now with the sense of a far deeper responsibility, 
steered their boats through the troubled waters 
of the Flow, straining their eyes on the look- 
out for the periscope of any such submarine as 
might be bold enough to try and steal into the 
harbour I 

You went on board, and still found everything 
delightful. Your hosts were charming, the ship was 
a picture of sweet cleanliness, the polished bright- 
work winked at you in the sun, and the enamelled 
turrets so beautifully smooth and fresh that the 



Commander almost frowned when in an unguarded 
8 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



moment you put your gloved hand on that dazzling 
expanse of grey glory ! 

But, perhaps, the biggest thrill of all was when 
you were taken down below to see a certain cabin. 
Such a perfectly entrancing little room, and so 
different from what you had imagined — not a bit 
like a cabin in a liner. A tiny room, and yet withal 
so homelike ! The bunk just beneath the scuttle 
— the " window," you called it — and covered with 
an embroidered bunk-spread worked by hands that 
put something besides needle-craft into the task. 
Cupboards and drawers everywhere, enough of them 
to raise envy in the breast of the most house-proud 
woman living, and yet all of them so cunningly 
devised and so cleverly fitted that they did not 
in any way prevent the cabin from looking a little 
salon. Flowered chintz curtains shielded the door- 
way and the little round window ; photographs in 
silver frames were on the chest of drawers and the 
knee-hole table, together with many a curious and 
interesting trifle which you simply had to pick up 
and examine and ask questions about, because you 
felt perfectly sure that there was a story attached 
to them all ! 



5 

Not all cabins were of this picturesquely fasci- 
nating type. There was one in our ship belonging 
to the Muddied Oaf — I went along to it with him 
and Marjorie Daw and her mother, in the course of 

9 



The Curtain of Steel 



one of those afternoon entertainments. I knew 
that my part was to look after Mrs. Daw, though 
the Oaf had not expressed any such purpose when 
he invited me to make one of the party ; that was 
because he did not know that he was in love with 
Marjorie Daw — not then. Marjorie knew it, of 
course. All that the Oaf said was : "I say, old 
man, I've got some females coming off to tea to- 
morrow, and you've got to come and help me out 
with it. / never know what to say to women — 
they're a damn nuisance on board a ship, anyway, 
but these have been rather decent to me so I've 
got to do the polite, and have 'em off. We'll push 
them to the beach again as soon as possible." 

" Well, I hope you'll tell your servant to tidy 
up your cabin," I had said. "It's in a beastly 
mess — smells like a fishmonger's shop that's been 
shut up over a hot Sunday." 

" Oh, that's only my lug- worms," said the Oaf. 
" I was going to bait my new line, seven hundred 
and fifty hooks, and lay it out last night, but I 
forgot. I daresay the bait niffs a bit by now. 
I'll have 'em chucked away. Pity, though ; if it 
hadn't been for these confounded females I would 
have had a shy at using those lug- worms to-night. 
They can't all be dead yet ! " 

He did have his cabin cleaned up, partially, but 
nothing could alter its close resemblance to a marine 
dealer's store. Oilskins and sea-boots and fishing- 
tackle were all over the place ; there was no carpet 
on the deck — the Oaf had rolled it up and shoved 

10 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



it in a corner because he found the bare corticene 
more convenient when he splashed about in his 
tin bath ; and the bunk had no more ornamental 
covering than the white Marcella quilt kindly pro- 
vided by the Admiralty, and even this, I regret to 
say, was not very white, as the Oaf was in the 
habit of using his bunk as a table when baiting his 
line with lug-worms or when engaged in any other 
equally messy occupation. 

Marjorie Daw took all this in at one glance; 
and even I could see in her eyes the laughing, ten- 
der, tearful, mothering look which showed how she 
longed to look after this great helpless baby ; it 
only shone for an instant and disappeared, and she 
was her gay light-hearted self again. But I also 
saw her hand rest for a second on the pillow which 
lay at the head of the bunk, naked and unashamed 
in its service pillow-case of coarse unbleached calico, 
as though the Oaf might feel something left by that 
little loving touch when his head rested there that 
night. 



6 

Yet the whole affair was, as I have said, distinctly 
and intensely boring, except to a few who were a 
good deal deeper in love than the Muddied Oaf, and 
consequently welcomed the idea of meeting their 
affinities on board. The married officers wanted to 
get ashore and go home to their wives, the Old 
Nuggets became more nuggetty than ever because 

B 11 



The Curtain of Steel 



the sanctity of the wardroom was invaded and 
their afternoon caulk rendered impossible, and the 
unattached officers of every grade and age un- 
gallantly resented their ship being turned into a 
giddy White City with the whole of the routine 
going to blazes ! 

Chief amongst those exceptional people who 
really did enjoy the Review were the young snotties 
and the newly-promoted Acting-Subs, who welcomed 
the chance of conducting visitors and friends around 
their ships with all the pride and enthusiasm of a 
showman who is at the same time a proprietor. 
Of course, any such exhibition of keen delight was 
far beneath the dignity of those officers who had 
attained the real rank of Sub-Lieutenant of the 
vt confirmed" not "acting" variety; and, in fact, 
the greatest degree of pride of possession was found 
in those who had but a few days previously been 
drafted to the Fleet from the Cadets' College at 
Osborne. 

Two of these, Palliser and Cordery, were well 
known to me. I met them ashore together one 
after noon just before the Review. Palliser had 
been appointed to the Formidable, and Cordery to 
the Hogue, and they were engaged in a heated 
argument as to the merits of their respective types 
of ships. You would have thought, to listen to 
them, that they had lived for years on board these 
vessels. 

" When all's said and done, yours is not really a 
fighting ship like ours. We stand up to the enemy 

12 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



and pound him with our twelve-inch guns. What 
can you do with a couple of nine-point -twos ? " 

" Pooh ! Everybody knows that if you want to 
see life you must go to a cruiser ! While you 
lumbering old slow-coaches are waddling about 
somewhere in the background, we cruisers cut 
ahead and have a smack at the enemy, and as 
often as not finish him off before you have a chance 
to come on the scene ! " , 

" Well, I'll bacK the good old Formidable against 
your tin pot, any day ! " . • 

' That shows how little you know about ships ! 
Look at our speed ! Why, we could make rings 
round you. We could dash in and sink you and 
be off again before you had realised what was 
happening. Cruisers are it, mark my words ! " 

Cordery went down with the Hogue, and Palliser 
was one of the survivors of the Formidable ; he 
came to us afterwards. Both cruiser and battle- 
ship proved equally vulnerable to the deadly torpedo. 

We had, in fact, to make a mental readjustment 
of values before the war had been very long in 
progress, and were awakened to the painful realisa- 
tion that the greater portion of that vast assemblage 
of ships at Spithead was no more than scrap-iron ; 
though, with our characteristic national obstinacy 
we refused to acknowledge this fact, and went on 
using the obsolete ships as if they were the very 
latest super-Dreadnoughts, with boundless credit 
to the ships themselves and immense benefit to the 
nation and empire. 

13 



The Curtain of Steel 



Fortunately, at the head of the line, we possessed 
an almost new Navy constructed on the most 
up-to-date lines, greatly outnumbering anything 
that the Germans could put up of a similar type, 
embracing all the most modern contrivances for 
offence and defence, and yet not so new that they 
had not already established a reputation for gunnery 
efficiency and for manoeuvring in company: — the 
two chief essentials of a fighting fleet. 



It was to these modern vessels that the eventful 
summons came. They were at their home base, 
and had settled down to routine again after the 
upsetting interlude of the Review. 

The liberty men were ashore, enjoying themselves 
after their usual fashion in the music halls and the 
public-houses, or parading the streets and looking 
at the shop windows ; some had their homes in 
the port, and had been given all-night leave. Not 
a few of the officers, also, had gone home to their 
wives and families, and had no thought of anything 
interfering with their intention to come off by the 
eight o'clock boat next morning, according to 
custom. 

To find all these scattered officers and men was 
the work chiefly of the masters-at-arms and ships' 
corporals, who were sent ashore to seek them out 
and fetch them all on board. 

Ships' police appear to possess an uncanny know- 

14 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



ledge of the habits and haunts of the members of 
their ships' companies almost amounting to the 
powers of a diviner. In reality, it is evidence of 
the keen interest which they take in their work 
and in the men with whom they have to deal. 

On this occasion they went at once, as if by 
instinct, to the exact spots where all the men were 
to be found, and had them all down at the pier- 
head, waiting for the boats to come to take them 
off to their ships, within a couple of hours. 

Who can ever forget the excitement of that 
evening, when on the stage of the music hall appeared 
suddenly the well-known figure of " Jaunty," with 
a message to the sailors in the audience that they 
were to repair on board immediately ? 

And, indeed, sailors composed the greater part 
of the audience. They had been roaring the choruses 
of sentimental and comic songs with great stolidity 
and vim, but their voices changed now to a buzz 
of eagerness and questioning as they rose in their 
places and left the hall in a body. The poor artistes 
who had sweated in their endeavours to please their 
bluejacket audience were left deserted and forgotten 
in the greater excitement which, for once, real life 
had to offer as a counter-attraction to the allure- 
ments of the stage. " What was the buzz ? Had 
Germany declared war on England ? Had England 
declared war on Germany ? Were we really going 
to chip in ? " 

While these men were being collected, other 
members of the resourceful ships' police were going 

15 



The Curtain of Steel 



from house to house and from street to street, 
gathering their ships' companies by ones and twos. 
Some of the officers had their homes in the suburbs. 
To reach these recourse had to be made to motor 
cars ; and out along the broad high roads and 
through many a country lane that night the dark- 
ness was pierced by the flashing headlights of cars 
at high speed, empty on the outward journey, and 
returning with a load of naval officers picked up 
at one place and another. Some of these officers 
had been in bed and asleep when the car drew up 
outside their darkened houses and tooted ' noisily 
to awake them. Many a wife arose that night 
frightened and apprehensive, and still in her night- 
gear helped her sleepy husband to tumble into his 
clothes and hastily cram some gear into a hand-bag ; 
and a few minutes afterwards, when the front door 
had banged and the noise of the swiftly-departing 
car had faded into silence, turned again to her lonely 
bed and pressed her weeping eyes into the pillow. 
The wives knew that war was coming ! 

8 : 

Eastwards along the English Channel, with all 
lights out, the great ships went, keeping station 
through the darkness of the calm July night, squad- 
ron by squadron, each led by its flagship. 

This incomparable Fleet represented the might of 
Britain ; yet to the average inhabitant of these 
isles probably none of the ships were known by 

16 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



name, except, perhaps, the ship which had revolu- 
tionised the world's navies, the Dreadnought, 
prototype of all modern battleships, herself already 
obsolescent and the least powerful unit in all that 
mighty armada. 

The Iron Duke was there, soon to be known to all 
men as the Fleet Flagship, the floating home of the 
Commander-in-Chief; and the Marlborough, her 
sister ship — the two most recent triumphs of ship 
construction. There also were the eight ships of the 
famous Second Battle Squadron of those days, headed 
by their flagship the King George V., scarcely less 
recent in their design than the Iron Duke and the 
Marlborougfi, yet of an age sufficient to have welded 
them into a homogeneous entity, and won for them 
a reputation for the finest gunnery efficiency and 
perfect tactical skill, so that they held undisputed 
place as the most powerful battle squadron in all the 
world. 

After these came other great fighting-ships, 
super-Dreadnoughts of various older classes, such 
as the Neptune, Colossus, Collingwood, Bellerophon, 
Temeraire and many another. Mighty ships, all 
of them, though less heavily gunned and in other 
respects not quite attaining to the capabilities of 
their newer companions. 

Nor were the swift and powerful battle-cruisers 
lacking, ships that could act as " Eyes of the Fleet " 
and at the same time strike, and strike hard. 

Altogether, the Fleet that steamed away eastward 
and northward was the most powerful naval fight- 

17 



The Curtain of Steel 



ing force that the world had ever seen. Looking 
back upon it from the present day it seems almost 
small and inconsiderable, seeing that it has been, 
roughly speaking, doubled since that day ; but even 
then it was far more powerful than the German 
Fleet, either as a whole or ship for ship. 

The whole of this force, at that time known as 
the Home Fleet, and not yet having received its 
new title The Grand Fleet, was commanded by 
Admiral Sir George Callaghan. He was very shortly 
to relinquish his command ; and his last cruise at 
sea was undertaken in performing this most fear- 
fully responsible task of leading the Fleet in safety 
to Scapa Flow, an honourable and fitting close to 
an honoured career ; before relaxing its grasp of 
power and drawing down the curtain over a life 
of active service, his was the hand that steadily 
and surely drew down the Safety Curtain of our 
nation and empire. 

9 

Meanwhile the flames had taken such a hold 
that they were now quite unmanageable ; though 
not yet had they burst through the flimsy scenery 
and spread to the stage where they could be seen 
in all their fearfulness. 

The audience still looked idly at the scene where 
strutted diplomatists, financiers, royal personages, 
journalists, and all the other familiar puppets of 
the hackneyed political play. 

18 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



Some heard the distant roaring of the flames, 
and guessed, and feared ; yet feared still more to 
create a panic amongst the rest of the audience. 

Little need to trouble about the chance of panic 
taking hold of the people ! The vast majority of 
them had not the intelligence to realise the danger. 
Even when the raging fire made its way to the 
stage where it could be seen of all men, they only 
admired the spectacular effect and were inclined 
to welcome it as something new and more interesting 
than the dull play they had seen so many times 
before. 

10 

At last a more lively apprehension seized upon 
the people, as matters began to look more and 
more serious. 

Various were the counsels offered, chiefly by the 
irresponsible. Some, led by a great London news- 
paper, advised that England should keep out of the 
War, and make a big profit by trading on highly 
advantageous terms with both sides in the struggle. 
These were the people who became the profiteers 
and food hoarders of later days. Oh, how the men 
of the Fleet writhed and shook with white rage 
when they read these despicable counsels ! 

Hotham, our Captain of Marines, was even more 
than usually explosive with respect to these mean 
hucksterers. I will not quote all his words, be- 
cause a good many of them though appropriate 
enough in a wardroom mess would not look quite 

19 



The Curtain of Steel 



so well in cold print. But the gist of his remarks 
was, " Why the Lower Regions should we risk 
our carmine-coloured lives to defend such a Gehenna- 
destined crew of loathsome-scented skunks as 
these ? Consign to perdition my sainted soul, if 
these quite unmentionable individuals represent the 
average Englishman, then all I can say is we must 
be in a fairly putrescent state, and the sooner the 
Germans take over the country and clean it up 
the better ! " 

" Buck up, old man," said our Padre, who was 
quite accustomed to the Marine Captain's ornate 
vocabulary, and was not at all shocked by it, reckon- 
ing it as a mere trick of verbal effervescence like 
the sensible little man he was. " Buck up, old man, 
and keep calm. England's all right. These people 
you complain about are just the Little Souls, the 
spiritual dwarfs of the nation, and you mustn't 
take them for samples of the people at large any 
more than you would take the physical dwarfs and 
monstrosities as typical. Every country possesses 
its quota of these Little Souls ; it's a million to one 
that some explosive Hauptman in Germany is at 
this very moment slinging off in your own florid 
Gothic style against a similar set of skunks in his 
own country." 

44 That's quite enough from you, Bish," retorted 
Hotham. " We've unfortunately got to listen 
quietly while you drivel at us on Sundays, but I'm 
dashed if I'm going to stand a second sermon from 
you in the middle of the week ! " 

20 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



With this he hurled three fat volumes of Cham- 
bers's Encyclopaedia at the reverend gentleman's 
stomach ; and the little member of the Church 
Militant, gleefully welcoming the opportunity of a 
scrap, retaliated by hurling himself bodily at the 
shoulders of the tall marine, where he clung like a 
clerical counterpart of the Old Man of the Sea. 
Subsequent proceedings found them both violently 
projected through the wardroom door to the deck 
of the flat outside ; where they forgot all about 
the wars and rumours of wars in the more per- 
sonally interesting incident of their own urgent 
private affairs. 

Exactly as a vast number of other individuals in 
England were doing at this very minute. 

11 

You must not imagine that I want to depict all 
of us people on board ship as being highly superior 
to all the people on shore, chock-full of patriotism, 
and taking an intelligent interest in the high affairs 
of state in contrast to the narrow-minded landsmen 
wrapped up in their own little selfish thoughts and 
schemes. 

A good many of us looked at the whole business 
from their own particular and personal view-point ; 
perhaps we all did so ; though I will say this for 
naval officers in general, at least for all those in my 
own ship who I suppose may be taken as fairly 
typical of the whole lot, that not one of them dreamt 

21 



The Curtain of Steel 



for a moment of putting his own interests — oh, well, 
it's hard to express what I mean without talking 
like a dictionary ; but anyhow, though some 
groused and grumbled they all intended to play the 
game, and did play it. 

There was, for example, Trythall, our senior 
watchkeeper. He was one of those who the master- 
at-arms fetched back to the ship by motor-car. 
Trythall had a pretty little house standing back 
from the Dorchester Road, out beyond Upwey. 
He also had a very charming little wife, and a per- 
fect ripper of a little four-year-old girl who was the 
intimate friend of everybody in our wardroom, and 
always insisted on being addressed as Miss Trythall. 
Nor were her friendships entirely confined to the 
officers ; some of her dearest acquaintances were 
formed with members of the lower deck. On the 
occasion of her fourth birthday she announced her 
intention of having a tea-party in the wardroom. 
" I'm going to ask you, Captain Lowndes." 
" Thank you very much, Miss Trythall, I shall 
be both honoured and delighted." 
" And you too, Mr. Meredyth." 
Mr. Meredyth, by the way, was the Muddied 
Oaf, and a special pal of Miss Trythall. He grunted 
his acceptance. 

" Yes, and Chief Stoker Button, and Ordinary 3 
Seaman Giblets. Just you four — and Daddy and 
Mummy, of course ; nobody else." 

Some diplomatic persuasion was called for before 
the personnel of the tea-party could be re-arranged. 

22 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



Trythall arrived on board that eventful night in 
a particularly grumpy frame of mind. 

44 What dashed tomfoolery is all this ? " he en- 
quired. " Dragging a fellow away from his com- 
fortable fireside at this time of night ! Silly non- 
sense, I call it ! " 

A good many people were to be dragged away 
from their comfortable firesides before all this was 
over ; but we did not realise that, yet. 

44 Why couldn't they wait till the morning, and 
do the thing at a gentlemanly hour, if they want to 
do it at all ? " he went on grumbling. 44 Myra had 
the dickens of a headache this evening, and this 
will only upset her more still. And Miss TrythalPs 
none too well." 

44 You're all alike, you married men," cut in the 
Oaf, with a cheerful grin on his good-humoured face. 
44 The curse of the Service, that's what vou are ! 
You shouldn't go and get married, then you wouldn't 
come off to your ship like a bear with a sore head." 

44 If it wasn't for us married men the Service 
would go to the dogs pretty quick ! We are the 
steady, sober, respectable members — not like you 
selfish blokes who do nothing for your country 
and spend all your substance in riotous living I 
But have your little say — £ don't mind, bless you ! 
' You'll be getting married yourself one of these days, 
and then you will alter your tune ! " 

4 What, me ? " The Oaf's jaw dropped in horri- 
fied disgust. 44 Not if I know it. I know a trick 
worth two ofHhat ! " 



23 



The Curtain of Steel 



Trythall seemed to consider it not worth while 
making any further retort, and he relapsed into 
moodiness ; and continued in this state for a whole 
week. In fact, for the first couple of days he was 
perfectly impossible and unapproachable, and shut 
himself up in his cabin at all times when he was not 
on duty. He owned up, some considerable time 
afterwards, that he spent these secluded hours in 
knitting a singlet for Miss Trythall — I ought to 
mention that he was uncommonly clever at knitting : 
almost as clever as when playing wing three-quarter 
in our unbeaten squadron team — and that during 
all that week he really didn't care whether the 
whole perishing world went to war or did the other 
thing. 

But no one who saw him at his work in those 
first few days would have guessed that that mood 
was on him. 

12 

I do not altogether wonder at Trythall taking 
the domestic view of the time's great events while 
the extent of their greatness was not yet thoroughly 
known, because I knew something of what he was 
leaving behind. 

Only a few weeks before the war broke out I 
had spent the afternoon of a lovely June Sunday 
in the garden of that pretty house off the Dorchester 
road. 

Marjorie Daw and her mother were there too, 
and the Muddied Oaf, and our little Padre — who 

24 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



had to go back on board to conduct Evening Ser- 
vice ; but he refused to budge till the last possible 
moment from the smooth green turf where he 
squatted, stodging currant buns and tea, asserting 
that he was enjoying himself a good deal more here 
than singing hymns in a stuffy flat, and anyway, 
the men could wait for ten minutes ! The little 
heathen ! 

We sat in the shade of a great spreading beech 
tree, and were too lazy to do anything more ener- 
getic than watch the gambols of the white butter- 
flies that flitted over a bank of blue delphiniums — 
such a blue ! Quite near to us a thrush ran about 
amongst the stems of a clump of blazing rhodo- 
dendrons, sometimes disappearing, then coming 
into view again, keeping close to the ground, more 
like a rat than a bird, emboldened by our quiet- 
ness and silent himself ; his singing-time would not 
come till later in the evening. 

Marjorie Daw chucked him a fragment of cake, 
which only had the effect of startling him, and off 
he went with a whirr of wings. 

Not having much success with the thrush, Mar- 
jorie aimed another fragment for the Oaf to catch 
in his mouth. He lay sprawled flat on his back 
in the sunshine, scorning the cool shade, with his 
hands clasped behind his head. 

;t Oh, I say, Miss Daw, that isn't fair ! " — as the 
first shot caught him full in the eye. " You ought 
to have said ' fore? or something. Now have 
another shy, and I bet you I'll catch two pieces 

25 



The Curtain of Steel 



out of three." He raised himself on one elbow, 
and poised with his mouth wide open. It was a 
very big mouth, and had a splendid outfit of strong, 
white teeth. " Now then, stand by — fire ! " The 
laughing girl threw carefully, and the Oaf, moving 
his head with the agility of a fox-terrier, caught 
first one piece, then a second and a third, and still 
demanded more; but Marjorie Daw said that he 
was a lazy fellow, and he couldn't expect her to 
spend the whole afternoon feeding him — -just as if 
she hadn't suggested the game herself ! 

Lounging about on the grass sounds very pleasant 
and nice, and, indeed, it is all right for men-folk, 
but for ladies it is not so easy to find a position 
which combines comfort with the degree of 
elegance they consider essential ; besides, there 
are dresses to be thought of. Even sitting with 
your back against the broad trunk of a beech 
tree, though certainly comfortable and not un- 
graceful, is rather apt to make your dress all bitty. 
Mrs. Trythall discovered this, and called her husband 
to her aid. 

" Come here, Billy, and make a back for me. 
And bring the cake with you. I want you to sit 
back to back with me, then I shall be supporting 
you, so it's really very kind of me." 

Trythall obediently came, shuffling across the 
grass in a succession of jerks and bumps that must 
have cost him a good deal more energy than if he 
had got up and walked, but that was too much 
to expect of him. 

26 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



4 You are a nuisance, Kid," he sighed, settling 
himself into the required position. 

" Don't lean back so hard, you're doubling me 
right up ! " Myra told him. 

11 Oh, sorry ! But I thought you said you were 
going to support me," grinned Trythall, as he 
stiffened his back and sat bolt upright. 

4 That's very nice ; now stay just like that." 

I really believe that half the reason for this 
manoeuvre was that she might stretch out the hand 
on the side hidden from the rest of us and link 
her fingers with Billy's. These two had been mar- 
ried for over five years, but had consistently refused 
to acknowledge any end to their honeymoon. 

Presently — " Billy, your back's awful hot ! I 
never felt such a hot back as yours, it's simply 
boiling ! Go and get me a chair." 

The Oaf got up to forestall him, but was arrested 
by a cry from Marjorie Daw. 

" Oh, Mr. Meredyth, quickly, help me ! Oh ! " 

4 What's up ? " said the Oaf, coming over to her 
in a couple of long strides. 

" A spider ! On my dress ! Take it off quickly. 
Oh, hurry, do!" There was a genuine look of 
distress on the face of the poor girl. But I regret 
to say that the Oaf laughed unsympathetically, 
as he stretched down a huge paw and scooped the 
offending spider into his palm. 

" Oh, kill it, kill it, do ; the horrid thing ! " 
insisted Marjorie. 

44 Kill it ? Not at all ! Why should I ? " said 

c 27 



The Curtain of Steel 



the Oaf, opening his hand and looking with a friendly 
interest at the spider, which thereupon uncurled 
itself and scrambled round to the back of his wrist, 
where it found some difficulty in picking its way 
amongst a forest of thick brown hair. From which 
awkward situation the Oaf rescued it with a gentle 
finger and thumb, and crossing the little lawn 
deposited it with great care in the middle of a 
flower bed. I could not help observing that he 
showed equal tenderness for the feelings of both 
the girl and the spider, and I thought that this was 
a very good promise of happiness to any girl with 
whom he might chance to fall in love. 

You will observe that I have made no attempt 
to give a detailed description of our happy after- 
noon or to reproduce the conversation ; as a matter 
of fact, I do not suppose that any of us spoke a 
dozen words of what might be called really intelli- 
gent conversation, of the sort that people talk in 
books. Such as there was, indeed, was entirely 
wasted on one member of the party ; namely, Mrs. 
Daw, who, overcome by the drowsiness of the warm, 
balmy air, nodded off to sleep all the afternoon till 
tea-time, only recovering herself with a little start 
every now and again to say, " I'm not asleep, my 
dears ; I've heard every word you've been saying." 
Which was obviously untrue, but no one could have 
had the heart to dispel her pleasant delusion. 

I only want to try and convey to you some 
impression of a happy, slumbrous Sunday afternoon 
in June, in a garden of soft green shades and bright- 

28 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



hued flowers, all nice and smelly ; the feel of 
the luscious grass ; the pleasant rattle of tea-cups ; 
the good taste of the sort of things you have at 
tea, when you eat them in the open air ; and, above 
all, the presence of thoroughly pleasant people 
who know each other well enough not to bother 
about being polite or to talk when they do not 
feel like talking. 

The only thing lacking was the company of a 
little child, and this we had to do without because 
Miss Trythall had invited herself out to tea with 
a neighbouring bachelor vicar whom she had 
announced her intention of marrying. 

Such afternoons and such pleasant gatherings, 
dreamily gay, drifting along the stream of the sunlit 
hours, with no careful design and yet so thoroughly 
good, were perhaps as typical as anything that 
could be found of the England that was, the England 
of the days before the war. 

One looked back upon them, afterwards, with 
longing regret ; and wondered if they could ever be 
again. 

13 

The cruise of the Fleet to Scapa was uneventful , 
except for one small incident which might have 
proved a very big one. 

During the dim hours, when the Fleet had not long 
turned the corner to go northwards, a flotilla of 
destroyers was sighted away on the eastern horizon, 

29 



The Curtain of Steel 



too far distant for them to be made out distinctly 
or for the challenge to be given. 

The uncertainty whether they might or might 
not be German destroyers naturally gave rise to a 
good deal of anxiety. For all that anyone could 
tell the next few minutes might bring forth a great 
and fateful action, a night attack on the Fleet by a 
determined dash of destroyers. Perhaps a swarm 
of torpedoes had already left their tubes and were 
even now speeding along their unseen path beneath 
the water towards the great ships. 

True, England and Germany were still at peace 
and on terms of at least nominal friendship ; but, 
seeing that Germany had within the past few days 
given ocular demonstration that she realised the 
military advantage to herself of striking first and 
declaring war afterwards, might she not be inclined 
to apply the same formula to England ? 

Undoubtedly, it would be a tremendous advantage 
to Germany to destroy the British Fleet, or even to 
cripple it seriously, at this early stage of the game ; 
and if the opportunity favoured the intention, no 
other consideration would be likely to hinder Ger- 
many from making the attempt. 

These very obvious considerations must have 
occurred to the mind of the officer of the watch on 
the bridge of every single battleship as he peered 
out to the eastward and strained his eyes to make 
out just what those destroyers might be doing. 

You can picture him, I daresay, in that lonely 
position, and enter into his thoughts and feelings. 

30 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



A watch-keeping officer may be a youngster of only 
a few months' seniority as lieutenant, but a terrible 
responsibility rests on him. He may be called upon 
at any minute to make a decision of tremendous 
import, to make it quickly — and alone. 

Always there rests with him the safety of the 
ship and of every soul on board ; and sometimes, 
as in this present case, a good deal more than the 
safety of his own ship alone — the very existence of 
the whole Fleet, the fate of the Empire. 

What a relief it must have been when the distant 
line of destroyers passed out of sight still keeping 
on their same course and gave no sign of having 
any intention of making an attack ! The mental 
tension of those few minutes was quickly relaxed ; 
it was a preliminary screwing up of nerves which 
were soon to submit to many such strains and even 
greater ones. 

Apparently, the destroyers must have been one 
of our own flotillas proceeding on its way to take 
up its appointed station in accordance with orders. 
Anyhow, we saw no more of it. 

And the first news to many of us that any such 
incident had taken place during the night was 
when Madden, our junior watchkeeper, cheerfully 
announced to us at breakfast : " Rotten bad luck 
last night, when I was on watch ; saw a lot of 
destroyers, and thought at first they were Germans 
coming to have a biff at us. Wouldn't it have been 
a jolly rag if they had ? " 



31 



The Curtain of Steel 



14 

Madden was more commonly known to us as Wet 
U'n, both because a surname like that simply asked 
for it, and because of his own personal character- 
istics and behaviour. But there was another and 
deeper side to his character in that he was a youth 
of dark Machiavellian schemes and theories, a cold, 
calculating extremist who delighted in formulating 
crafty plans in which neither sentiment nor morality 
had the slightest share. 

I think it must have been this night vision of a 
threatened attack by German destroyers that first 
implanted in his mind the seed of a theory which he 
some time afterwards developed for our edification. 

" What we ought to have done," he informed us, 
" is just this ; we should have lain low and said 
nothing, and let Germany think we intended to 
remain neutral. Then she would have brought 
her Fleet out and made straight for the Channel to 
attack the French Fleet or bombard their ports. We 
should have let the German ships do this ; and 
when they had come well out and away from their 
own base, then we ought to have nipped in behind 
them and cut them off. We could have mopped 
up the whole boiling lot of them ; not a single 
German ship would ever have got home again. If 
you like, we could have made a formal declaration 
of war by wireless just about half an hour before the 
Fleets got into touch ; personally, I should be against 
any twaddle of that sort ; still, if you are keen on 

32 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



observing the conventions— but either way, we 
should have put the German Fleet down under, that's 
the main thing. It would have saved a lot of trouble 
after ; all this confounded watching and waiting 
up here, for instance ! " 

This cold-blooded theory of Madden's certainly 
opens up long avenues of thought. It would have 
sounded perfectly natural from the lips of a Prussian, 
and in a more high-sounding form might have been 
quoted from any one of a do^en or so books by 
German military writers and philosophers of the 
Might -is-Right school. To the old-fashioned and 
conventional mind of the average Englishman, 
accustomed to regard military advantage as of far 
less importance than honourable and recognised 
methods of warfare, it seems undeserving of any 
serious attention other than an immediate con- 
demnation. 

Is one, however, necessarily an Advocatus Diaboli 
in pointing out that there is something to be said 
on the other side ? 

As a matter of morality, it is not arguable whether 
one may ever do evil that good may come. This 
may be regarded as a closed question. 

Yet history is full of dark deeds which led to the 
amelioration of society ; so much so thai: it is hard 
to think of many great steps of progress in human 
affairs that did not originate in violence and wrong. 

That was a deed of black shame and dishonour, 
when the young men of early Rome took to them- 
selves wives by force, cheating the Sabine men and 

33 



The Curtain of Steel 



tearing away their shrieking wives and daughters, 
themselves laughing deep down in their hairy chests 
at the howling imprecations of the men and the 
squeals of the women ; and yet this cruel and 
despicable trick led to the founding of the common- 
wealth of world-civilising Rome. 

And you can easily trace a long succession of 
such deeds, from that early day to the time when 
equal cruelty and trickery on the part of Clive 
and Warren Hastings tamed the Indian jungle 
of tigers and hinds into a paradise of apocalyptic 
peace. 

Of course, it is open to the moralist to argue that 
the same progress would have been achieved and 
even reached the sooner and the more perfectly by 
honourable methods ; -in which the moralist is very 
likely right. However, I do not went now to wander 
into the dim and difficult paths of Philosophical 
History. And if I have digressed for a few steps 
it is time now to retrace my way and get back to 
the high road. ! 

Pausing, however, for just one more moment at 
the junction of the paths, I would like to be quite 
fair to young Madden and say that his scheme for 
destroying the German Fleet would not be considered 
a mean trick by all people. To strike first and declare 
war afterwards is quite contrary to all the ancient 
rules of warfare, certainly ; but in modern times 
those rules are apt to be disregarded as foolishly 
sentimental ; the warfare of to-day being chiefly 
conducted on the principle : 

34 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



" Blest is the man who hath his quarrel just, 
But doubly blest is he who gets his blow in just" 

And I suppose there can be no question that if we 
had succeeded in destroying the entire German 
Fleet in the first week of hostilities this would have 
led to a quick decision, and would have largely 
prevented the untold suffering that spread over 
all nations in the after years. 

However, I am glad we didn't do it — that way. 

15 

The men who took those ships northward on that 
historical cruise belonged to a system of things 
already swept by the tide of war into the backwater 
of the obsolete and the half-forgotten. 

We used to talk about " Old Navy " admiringly 
or contemptuously according to our own personal 
views and experience, in the old days of peace ; 
meaning the Old Navy of masts-and-yards, or the 
Navy as it was when the Channel Fleet used to lord 
it on the seas at a cruising speed of five knots. 

But, in truth, the officers and men who comprised 
the ships' companies on that great Odyssey into the 
mists of the North, themselves formed an Old Navy, 
looked at in the light of after developments. 

Not yet had there swarmed into the Fleet that 
invading host — and very welcome invaders they 
were— of R.N.R. and R.N.V.R. men who after- 
wards joined up, corresponding to the Territorials, 



The Curtain of Steel 



the Kitchener's men and the Conscripts who trans- 
formed the Old Regular Army into an altogether 
new thing. We, too, had all these various brands 
of new blood in course of time ; but, at first, the 
officers and crews who manned the ships were the 
counterpart of the Army of Mons, men of the " pukka 
Navy," who took on this job as something that 
was all in the day's work and nothing more than 
what they had signed on for. 

Their ages ranged from sixty to sixteen ; some 
had spent the best part of a lifetime in the Service, 
and some had joined only a few days ago. But 
one and all were in some subtle and indescribable 
manner different from those who came after. It 
was purely a spiritual difference. They were imbued 
with the traditions of the Service, and whether this 
resulted from the first chilly dip or from a long- 
continued soaking, it amounted to the same thing 
in all hands. They had neither the enthusiasm of 
the volunteer adventurer nor the sulkiness of the 
unwilling pressed man ; in fact, they were entirely 
free from all unnecessary sentimentalism, and 
looked on the Navy as a trade which they had taken 
up with their eyes open. Something more than a 
trade, perhaps ; a career of honour in which they 
might serve King and Country. But still, a life's 
work. 

For this reason they treated each other differently 
from the newcomers. I do not mean that they 
resented the outsiders coming to invade their ancient 
privileges, because this is the very opposite to what 

36 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



they did. On the contrary, those of the Old Regular 
Navy were more exacting towards one another, and 
have continued to be so to this day, not making the 
allowances even for the youngest entry who " joins 
up properly " as are made for even an experienced 
outsider who comes in temporarily, let him remain 
for months or even years. 

Yes, I certainly think that these heroes of the 
Great Trek deserve a special and distinct remem- 
brance in the minds of those who shall look back 
when the war is all over and endeavour to make a 
mental reconstruction of its beginnings. And when 
I say " these heroes " I only mean these actors in 
the drama ; for nothing nauseates a naval man so 
much as the attempt to represent him as a hero or 
to theatricalise him and his profession. We have 
had to endure in silence a sickening amount of this 
sort of thing since the war began, and, I regret to 
say, to see it encouraged by the posings and postur- 
ings of just a very few of those who came to us from 
outside, the harmful unteachable few who Do Not 
Understand. 

But the men who first went North were not heroic. 
Of course there were vast differences even amongst 
themselves. The younger ones numbered some 
who were brimming with zeal and enthusiasm, 
already marked out in the hey-day of happy youth 
for a career of success and honour ; and some had 
even now shown themselves failures, good-for- 
nothings, King's Bad Bargains. Their seniors cor- 
responded to them ; there were officers and men 

37 






The Curtain of Steel 



soured and embittered by long service, jealous of 
those who had gone over their heads, sullen with 
many grievances not always imaginary, and count- 
ing the days and the years to the time when they 
could turn their backs on the Navy for good. Others 
had got on well, by their own merits or by luck, and 
spoke only with pride and affection of " the Old 
Firm " which had looked after them so kindly and 
so long. 

But these, at either extreme, were the excep- 
tions ; the vast majority were just ordinary indi- 
viduals, going each in his own way quietly and 
sticking to his duty with a greater or less degree of 
interest. 

Exactly the same sort of people, I imagine, as 
went to sea with Nelson. 

Before many months were over, thousands of 
them were to find their last resting-place beneath 
the grey waves of the North Sea. They gave their 
lives in the same manner as they had spent them, 
quietly and gladly, without making a song about 
it. Others would follow, they knew, to carry on 
the business and the traditions of the Old Firm. 



16 

The great harbour of Scapa Flow for which the 
ships were making was probably unknown to at 
least ninety per cent, of the men on board. It 
had not been altogether unused by naval ships. 
For many years past the Channel Fleet had visited 

38 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



it occasionally. I myself had spent three weeks 
there in the parent ship of a destroyer flotilla some 
few years before, during the Manoeuvres. But the 
most of us were now visiting the place for the first 
time. We all got to know it quite well, afterwards ! 
At that time, however, there were probably far 
more Germans than Englishmen who had a good 
knowledge of this anchorage in the Orkneys. For 
a large number of Germans used to come across 
every year and spend a summer holiday in the 
place, running big pleasure-yachts specially fitted 
for this traffic. They came, ostensibly, as tourists, 
but we have learnt since then that a German tourist 
usually has some ulterior purpose behind that of 
mere pleasure-making, and if he is not a paid pro- 
fessional spy he is, generally speaking, an amateur 
who dabbles in the dirty work for the pure love of 
the thing. I do not suppose there is much to be 
known about the Orkneys and their inhabitants 
which is not deposited in the governmental archives 
of Germany, carefully compiled by those summer 
tourists. However, it doesn't seem to have done 
them very much good ! 

For a knowledge of the waters and coasts of the 
place Germany depended on a still more impudent 
method. German cruisers had taken advantage 
in peace time to visit this harbour, and doubtless 
did not spend the time in idleness. 

Now, there is no harm in naval ships visiting the 
harbours of another country ; it is a thing frequently 
done, by ourselves more than by any other nation. 

39 



The Curtain of Steel 



But it is usual to ask permission first, and to 
indicate the date and length of the visit, what 
ships are coming, and how many of them. In fact, 
there is a very strict etiquette about this foreign 
visiting, and the breach of it would rightly be con- 
sidered almost an international insult. 

Germany, however, did not think it worth while 
to observe this formality when she sent her men- 
o'-war to the British port of Scapa Flow. 

17 

I do not propose to burden my readers with a 
description of the place. But having before men- 
tioned the fact of its being extraordinarily well 
adapted for use as a war harbour, I may as well 
explain why this is so, without divulging any con- 
fidential secrets — though, as I have said, there is 
little danger of doing that, as the Germans knew 
all about the place long ago. 

Before I first set eyes on the Orkneys I used to 
imagine this northern archipelago as a romantic 
and beautiful island group, full of the sort of scenery 
that poets would rave about. 

The reality is very different. True, there are 
times, in the height of summer, when the scene is 
one of real beauty, but that is chiefly owing to the 
wonderful light and the sea. The Island of Hoy, 
too, the second largest and the westernmost of the 
group, is mountainous and has some boldly pic- 
turesque cliffs. But with this one exception the 

40 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



islands are all more or less low-lying, and practically 
treeless. There is little to attract the eye in the 
boggy moorland which occupies the greater part 
of their extent, and the cultivated land in the 
valleys and near the shore is of such poor character 
that it cannot boast the exuberant beauty owned 
by similar districts in the more fertile south. 

I daresay the Orcadians may resent this descrip- 
tion, as they probably think there is no place in 
the world to compare with Orkney ; and I quite 
admit that the more one gets to know the place the 
more pleasant it seems to look upon. But I am 
speaking of the view of the new-comer, to whom 
it certainly appears a bleak and barren spot. 

However, beauty is not everything. From the 
naval point of view a very different description of 
the place can be given. 

The great natural protection of the harbour is 
the Pentland Firth, which separates the Orkneys 
from the mainland. Here a fierce tide runs, with 
innumerable races, rips and currents, constantly 
changing and reappearing in unexpected localities, 
making navigation difficult and dangerous for small 
craft even in calm weather. 

During a storm — and storms are frequent enough 
in these latitudes — and for days afterwards, the 
task of navigating the Firth is almost an impossi- 
bility ^except for such hardy seamen as spend their 
lives up here. 

The Firth is not very wide ; at its narrowest 
part, which happens to be the eastern entrance, 

41 



The Curtain of Steel 



it is not more than ten miles across. Consequently 
it is not over hard to patrol. So, what with the 
constant watch of patrol vessels and the natural 
difficulties of navigation, a German destroyer or 
submarine that should desire to find its way into 
the harbour would have but a slender chance. And 
as for a submarine attempting the passage of the 
Firth below the surface, woe betide the unfortunate 
crew ! They would never see the light of day again. 
For, bad as the surface currents are, the deeper 
currents are infinitely worse, being unknown and 
unknowable ; they are lurking far down below, like 
the sea-demons of the ancient beliefs, ready to 
seize hold of any craft that dares to invade their 
gloomy deeps, and drag her aside out of her course, 
flinging her against the wicked rocks and jagged 
cliffs which, unseen and uncharted, line the sides 
and cover the sea-floor of the cruel Pentland Firth. 

Another great natural advantage of the place is 
the mild climate. Although so far north, the 
islands are not nearly so cold as might be expected ; 
the reason being that they are washed by the bene- 
ficent Gulf Stream, which renders the' air tempera- 
ture but little varying all the year round. Indeed, in 
winter, many places on the east coast of England 
are far colder than Scapa, where the climate at this 
season is not greatly different from that of Devon- 
shire. 

These climatic conditions render it possible for 
the men of the Fleet to live with at least far less 
discomfort than might have to be endured else- 

42 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



where ; having myself endured them for three 
successive winters I think I am entitled to my 
opinion, and I do not think that many will be 
found to disagree with me. 

There is no doubt also that it is a very healthy 
place. Exact statistics have been compiled, I 
suppose, by the medical branch, but without being 
able to quote these I can safely assert that the men 
of the Grand Fleet have never been so free from 
sickness as during this war ; though, of course, 
there are other contributory causes. Prominent 
amongst these contributory causes may be reckoned 
another of the natural advantages of Scapa, namely, 
that it lies cut off from the mainland and remote 
from the dangers and diseases of great cities. 

Remote also from their distractions; and this, 
though you may be inclined to think it counts 
against a place, proved in reality a saving grace. 
Because when we knew that it was quite impossible 
to " see life " we contented ourselves and realised 
that it was no good crying for the moon ; but when 
we visited harbours where big towns were within 
reach the perversity of human nature made us dis- 
contented and uneasy ; having tasted a little we 
wanted more, and were sometimes bad tempered 
because we could not get it. 

18 

When the sands of July had nearly run out there 
occurred an event of great importance in the fast en - 

D 43 



The Curtain of Stee 



ing of the Safety Curtain. Sir John Jellicoe came 
up North to take over the command of the Grand 
Fleet. He travelled incognito from King's Cross to 
Wick, where the light cruiser Boadicea was wait- 
ing to take him and his staff across the Pentland 
Firth. 

From this very first moment the weather seemed 
to range itself against him, and gave him a fore- 
taste of the same scurvy trick it was afterwards to 
play him at Jutland. As the train rolled down the 
slope of the last few miles towards Wick, a grey fog 
began to come up from the sea and drift heavily 
shorewards in a thick white bank. 

The Admiral went on board the Boadicea, but to 
leave the harbour was almost out of the question, 
and it was decided to remain until the fog should 
show signs of lifting. 

All that night the ship's bell clanged gloomily 
every few minutes, and even those who were down 
below in their cabins could tell by the muffled 
sound of the ringing that the fog bank was as thick 
as ever. 

In the early morning the weather lifted a little 
and the sun shone out. At once the order to weigh 
was given, and the little cruiser hastened to start 
on the short cruise across the narrow waters that 
separated her from her objective. 

But the promise of improvement in the weather 
was only elusive ; the gleam of sunshine proved to 
be but temporary ; and the Boadicea had not got 
far on her way before the fog came down as thick 

44 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



as before, and she was forced to put back again 
towards Wick. 

After a while she turned about once more, and 
carefully felt her way through the fog, which, 
fortunately, became much less dense on nearing the 
Orkneys. 

Off the entrance to the Flow the mist disappeared, 
and in its place was a steady dripping rain fall- 
ing through a heavy atmosphere, and making 
patterns of intersecting rings on an oily smooth 
sea. 

What mattered the weather ? The Man had 
arrived who was to shape the destinies of the Grand 
Fleet and instil into it something of his own un- 
equalled personality. 

We were still not at war, and did not even 'know 
whether we should ever go to war. Opinions in the 
wardroom were pretty evenly divided as to our 
present chances. 

Phlegmatic people whose memories carried a long 
way back shook their heads, and recalled many an 
occasion when England had been brought so near 
the verge of hostilities that it had seemed impossible 
to escape ; a quarrel with France appeared in- 
evitable at the time of the Fashoda incident ; the 
Dogger Bank affair was within an ace of bringing 
on war with Russia ; we nearly went to war with 
America over Venezuela, with Germany over Agadir, 
with Turkey over a frontier question at Akaba. 
But on all these occasions, and others besides, the 
threatened outbreak never took place ; so, as likely 

45 



The Curtain of Steel 



as not, the present affair might fizzle out in just 
the same manner. 

Those who were of this opinion were candidly 
disgusted at the prospect, and said so. 

But the greater number of us inclined to the 
opinion that England was certain to " come in." 

And because such a divergence of prophecy offered 
a capitar opportunity of putting a little life into the 
dullness of the waiting period, the more enthusiastic 
theorists on either side became embued with a 
sporting desire- to back their opinions. 

The bets, taken and offered, generally took the 
form of half-gins. 

" I hope we shan't chip in," Madden was heard 
to observe ; " if we do, I lose sixteen half-glasses 
of What Killed Auntie." 

And when it was pointed out to him that even 
weightier issues than this hung upon the balance 
of the international situation, his only reply was : 
" Yes, I know ; if we don't go to war I stand to 
make thirty-two spots, with Angostura and brandied 
cherries in 'em ! " 

What he spoke openly in jest, not a few miserable 
soulless individuals were unfortunately saying to 
themselves in sober earnest, on a larger scale, in 
England. 

■ Each night we sat up eagerly waiting for the 
Poldhu wireless press message to come through ; 
it usually came just about midnight, and the ante- 
room, usually deserted at this hour, was filled with 
officers who cared nothing for the fact that they 

46 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



would have to turn out again at four o'clock to keep 
the morning watch, and with others of mature age 
and sedate habits who would customarily have been 
snugly tucked up in beddy-bye and fast asleep an 
hour ago. Excited expectation gave place each 
night to disappointment at the paucity of news, 
events marching far too slowly for our unsated 
curiosity. 

We were, of course, in total ignorance of the fact 
that events were really marching all this time with 
tremendous swiftness, every hour witnessing a 
gigantic advance, or, to speak more correctly, an 
enormous backward slip, as our diplomatists strove 
and strove in vain ; first, to prevent the outbreak 
of the flames, and, afterward, when this was recog- 
nised a superhuman task, to limit the area of de- 
vastation within as narrow bounds as possible; 
this, too, soon proved too much for their herculean 
endeavours. 

Picket-boats were constantly steaming across the 
harbour from every ship, bearing their respective 
captains to the flagships of their squadrons, and 
the admirals of squadrons to the flagship of the 
Commander-in-Chief to attend meetings and receive 
orders. These deliberations were, naturally, kept 
secret from us of the commonalty, except so far as 
they might concern the workings of any particular 
department, and, even then, they were strictly 
confidential. The result, of course, was to increase 
our curiosity and set all sorts of rumours afloat. 

From the first day of our arrival our letters were 

47 



The Curtain of Steel 



censored, and all mention of our whereabouts was 
strictly forbidden. Some of us felt this rather 
severely, especially those who were married, since 
for some abstruse reason a parting seems all the 
harder to bear when you cannot let your wife know 
where you are. Of course this is quite unreason- 
able, and the more spartan husbands took the cold 
sensible view of the situation, and said : 4 What 
possible good can it do my missus to know where I 
am ? I daresay she wants to know, but she can 
just carry on wanting, and it won't hurt her ! " 

The very young married officers thought this 
extremely callous. 

20 

It is very far from my intention to write a Diary 
of the Great War, with all the dates and times 
inserted correctly. The great objection to chrono- 
logical records of that kind is that lots of people 
write them and nobody ever reads them. 

One date, however, cannot be passed over without 
special mention, and that is the one which put an 
end to all our guesses and arguments, telling us 
that the nation had made its decision, and had 
chosen the hard path of honour. Like many other 
most eventful days it passed off most uneventfully. 
August the fourth was not greatly different from 
August the third or August the fifth, so far as we 
were concerned. 

It was not till eleven o'clock at night that we 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



got the news. At that hour a wireless message 
was passed to us from the flagship, and a signalman 
came into the ante-room with the chit in his hand. 

Someone took it from him and read the message 
aloud. 

It ran thus : " Commence hostilities against 
Germany." 

The most weighty four words that had ever 
sounded in the nation's ears ! Pregnant with 
monstrous issues, threatening black sorrow to a 
million peaceful homes, inviting the foul harpies of 
War, Pestilence, and Famine to hover with gloomy 
wings over the earth instead of speeding the swift 
shadow of their flight, calling to happy Youth to 
lay aside its glory in corruption, those four. words 
nevertheless contained within their brief compass 
the promise that evil should not triumph over good, 
and that after all the hideous trials to come, the 
earth should yet again be a fair place to live in. 

This, I suppose, is a fair summary of what we 
all felt. But we did not express our feelings in 
anything at all resembling these terms. There was 
a great sense of exhilaration, because we knew 
quite well that we should win, and because we were 
glad that we were not to be shamed by an ignominious 
neutrality. Furthermore, we were not sorry to have 
a smack at Germany, which had been getting a 
great deal too uppish, and needed to be put in her 
proper place. 

That night we sat up late, discussing a hundred 
matters all in connection with the coming war, 

49 



The Curtain of Steel 



making a good many conjectures that looked foolish 
enough in the light of after events, and laying down 
the law after our usual manner as to what ought 
or ought not to be done for the' successful conduct 
of the war. 

Our gunnery lieutenant brushed aside all the 
wider questions of policy and strategy, and looked 
at the whole affair purely from his own personal 
and professional standpoint. Gunnery lieutenants, 
of course, are all stark staring mad, and the only 
difference between them is that some are madder 
than others. 

Our own representative of this highly scientific 
and specialised branch rubbed his hands and chortled 
in his joy. 

" Now we shall really be able to see what the 
Krupp guns are good for," was his delighted com- 
ment ; " they've talked a lot of hot air about them 
and turned up their noses at our wire-wound guns ; 
but they'll sing a different song before this lot's 
over." 

Now, ours was the best gunnery ship in a squadron 
noted for its gunnery, and we were all secretly 
proud of the fact, but we couldn't possibly allow 
" Guns " to take the bit in his teeth in this fashion, 
so we suppressed him to the best of our ability, 
and he went off in a huff to work out a new spotting 
scheme in the armament office. 

I suppose that in the wardroom of the German 
Navy at this moment the officers were solemnly 
standing round stiffly and strictly at attention and 

50 



The Lowering of the Curtain 



clicking their heels together, while they vowed 
ridiculous pledges of hatred to England, and all 
that sort of thing. Perhaps, their captains came 
in and made burning little speeches all about the 
honour of the Fatherland, with side references to 
the shining sword and the glittering armour and 
the mailed fist ; and then they all solemnly Hoch'd 
their Kaiser, and saluted. I expect so, anyhow. 

We didn't take it like that, as you see. It was 
not our way. Our captain came into the mess, 
but he did not make a speech ; he said that, so far 
as he could figure it out, those silly asses of Germans 
had been asking for trouble for a long time, and 
now they had got it ; and he hoped the wine steward 
wasn't turned in because he wanted a drink, and it 
wouldn't be a bad idea if we all had one with him. 
Which we did. Our captain was distinctly one of 
ourselves, and we one and all loved him, and re- 
spected him at the same time. Like Nelson with 
his captains, we were, on a smaller scale, " a band 
of brothers." There were a good many other 
captains of the same type in the Fleet ; and this 
spirit of comradeship tempered with allegiance was 
one. of the many factors that made for confidence 
in whatever naval occasions might arise. 

Madden, naturally, took the line directed by his 
cold-blooded brain. 

4 It's the best thing that could have happened 
for me," he remarked. " Here am I, three hundred 
and odd places down on the lieutenants' list, and 
never a dog's chance of ever getting promoted until 

51 



The Curtain of Steel 



this came along. Now, with any luck, some of the 
birds above me will be knocked off their perch, and 
I shall hop into their places." 

" Callous little brute ! " we observed. " How can 
you be such a bloodthirsty ruffian? Besides, it 
may as well be you that gets knocked out, as much 
as anybody else." 

" In that case," he replied, " I shan't have to 
bother about it. Of course, I don't want any 
fellow to lose the number of his mess ; but, all the 
same, a good many will, and I should be a fool not 
to be glad about being shoved up on the list. So 
would anybody ! " 

There was no arguing with him. We sat talking 
a while longer, and then drifted away to our cabins. 

At the back of our minds, no doubt, all of us 
had been thinking about those at home whom we 
had left so suddenly and unexpectedly a few days 
ago. Some anxiety was mingled with much tender- 
ness in these unspoken thoughts ; anxiety for the 
feelings, the feelings anc^ the loneliness of those so 
dear ones, but not anxiety for their security. That, 
at any rate, we knew was assured ; the Fleet had 
taken up its appointed station — The Safety Curtain 
had clashed down into its place. 



52 



II. The Curtain in Place 



II. The Curtain in Place 



TAKING a mental glance at ourselves as we 
were in those very early days, four years 
ago, we see now what very curious and 
illogical creatures we were. Our ideas on the 
subject of naval warfare, were elementary in the 
extreme. To explain what these ideas were I 
cannot do better than quote a certain temporary 
surgeon who joined us not long ago ; after a few 
days in the ship he went about with the proverbial 
14 face like a sea-boot," and seemed entirely ill- 
pleased with life in the British Navy. 

' What's biting you, Little Sunshine ? " we asked 
in our kindly way. 

" Fed up with the Navy," he replied ; " I wouldn't 
have joined it if I had known it was going to be 
like this. I wish now that I had volunteered 'for 
the Army instead ! " 

55 



The Curtain of Steel 



" Why, what's wrong ? " 

" Well, I imagined there would have been a 
Fleet action about once a week, with minor scrap- 
ping in between whiles. I expected to be chasing 
German ships all day long, and bagging two or 
three of 'em every time we went out. I thought 
I should have to live with my ears continually 
stuffed with cotton-wool on account of the perpetual 
gunfire — but I'm blest if I ever expected this sort 
ofthing!" 

We were able by this time to smile at him in a 
superior fashion, having ourselves outgrown these 
ideas : but, really, he only expressed what we all 
thought at the beginning of the war. We expected 
sea-fights of the type described in the books of 
Marryat and Henty, dashing heroic actions, thrilling 
chases, and dramatic large-scale battles ; and we 
looked to witness these both early and often. 

But they did not happen. In fact nothing 
happened, or very little. We were all at the pitch 
of high expectancy, but excepting for the official 
announcement that we were in a state of war we 
could not observe any very great difference from 
being at peace. 

One evening, during those very early days, when 
the Fleet was at anchor, we heard the sound of guns 
firing. Everyone rushed on deck at once, eager to 
find out what was doing. We saw two of our 
cruisers getting under way and proceeding towards 
the harbour's entrance. This increased our excite- 
ment, and immediately created a rumour that the 

56 



The Curtain in Place 



Germans were making a bold attack and trying to 
force their way in. The only undetermined point 
was whether the attack was a mere affair of destroyers 
or whether the whole of the High Seas Fleet were 
assembled outside and waiting for us to come 
out. 

We looked anxiously towards the Flagship, hoping 
to see the signal that should order us to weigh 
anchor and steam out to settle the affair. 

But when nothing further happened, and no signal 
fluttered out at the Flagship's yardarm, we reluc- 
tantly came to the conclusion that there was to be 
no fighting that evening ; and so we all went below 
again. Not till a day or two after did we piece 
together the facts ; the two cruisers had simply 
put to sea on ordinary patrol duties ; and the 
gunfire which we had heard was from some light 
guns that had been hastily mounted at the entrance 
of the harbour as a temporary defence and were 
then being tested. 

It was the first of many disappointments. 



/. 

And, indeed, thinking it over, it seems to me 
extraordinary that the German Battle Fleet should 
not have decided to challenge us in those first days 
of the war. 

Most of us confidently expected a Fleet action 
within the first fortnight, and I suppose the majority 
of people on shore expected the same. Perhaps 

57 



The Curtain of Steel 



those of us who were better informed may have 
guessed that matters would turn out just as they 
did ; but, for the life of me, I cannot, to this day, 
make out why the German High Seas Fleet did 
not risk all and come out to attack us as soon as 
war was declared. 

True, our Fleet was much the stronger ; but the 
disproportion was smaller then than it became 
afterwards, very much smaller indeed, and the 
Germans must have been well aware that we should 
soon be increasing our naval forces at a far greater 
ratio than they could hope to do. 

Had they put the matter to the test then, who 
knows what the event might have been ? In the 
pride of our unchallenged record we may be inclined 
to dismiss the question lightly, and say that of 
course we should have blown the German ships 
out of the water. Well, we might have done so, 
and probably should have ; but the infinite chances 
of war combining unluckily with the fickle favour 
of the elements might just possibly have led to a 
very different result. On that " just possibly " it 
was surely worth while for the Germans to gamble ; 
for, had the luck been with them, even just suffi- 
ciently to allow them to cripple our Fleet seriously 
without defeating it entirely, the material and moral 
result would have gone far towards winning the 
war for them, and possibly winning it in the first 
two or three months. On the other hand, had they 
lost their Fleet, they would have been little the 
worse off, and would almost certainly have received 

58 



The Curtain in Place 



some compensation by inflicting a certain amount 
of damage upon our Fleet. 

However, great as the prize of victory would 
have been for them, to make up their minds to 
challenge us would have required the spirit of men 
willing to take the risk of a sporting chance. And 
the Germans never were sportsmen. 



Ask any officer of the executive branch what 
is the thing most deeply engraven on his memory 
as a relic of those early days, and he will probably 
answer in two words " Net Defence." You must 
bear in mind that our Fleet anchorage was at that 
time entirely undefended except by Nature. 

This fact alone ought to convince the Germans, 
if it were worth while trying to convince them, 
that we neither began the war nor were indeed 
prepared for it. In many another respect, also, 
we had to improvise, but nothing was so important 
as this, whether you consider it as a proof of our 
unwillingness for war, or — as the executive officers 
of the Fleet considered it — in the light of an ex- 
tremely unpleasing job of work which had to be 
seen to immediately. 

It was a job of amateur work ; for the naval 
officer's ordinary training does not include the art 
and science of barring waterways against enemy 
ingress. Still, the thing had to be done s'omehow, 
and, as usual, the Navy rose to the occasion. 

E 59 



The Curtain of Steel 



A temporary defence was improvised, each 
squadron being responsible for a section, and each 
ship for a definite share. And what a business it 
was ! The upper deck of every ship became a trap 
for unwary feet, like a course laid out for an obstacle 
race, as the working parties spread out lengths of 
wire and laboriously wove them into nets of mon- 
strous mesh and Brobdignagian extent. 

Nor was this the end of the trouble by any means. 
The completion of the work was not an affair of a 
few days, and when it was but partly done, as well 
as afterwards, the task of keeping it in repair was 
even more toilsome than that of making it. 

Daily would come the signal which stated that 
so many E.G. mine-cases (the floats of the nets) had 
disappeared, that such and such a length of wire 
had parted, and that the net in one place or another 
had carried away. The officers who were told off 
to look after this particular job became quite nerve- 
racked in a small way concerning this constant 
signal, expecting it every hour and feeling that it 
was bound to come even after many hours of de- 
ceptive silence — and of course it always came at a 
time when some other pressing work was in hand. 

No wonder the duty was not looked upon as 
enjoyable ; for naturally it was a bad- weather job 
— in fine weather there would be. no breakages 
needing repair. And in those early days all such 
work had to be done by means of picket boats ; 
for then we had none of those invaluable drifters 
which afterwards proved such a huge boon, enabling 



The Curtain in Place 



harbour-work to be carried on in all weathers. As 
the months drew on, the seas frequently became too 
rough even in that land-locked harbour for the little 
picket boats, staunch as those boats are ; and in 
such high latitudes, it must be remembered, the 
wintry storms begin much earlier than they do 
further south. Many times before our first Christ- 
mas up there we were cut off from all communica- 
tion with the shore and with other ships for as long 
as three days at a time. It was the worst winter of 
all, not only in respect of the weather itself, but 
more still on account of our not yet having the in- 
estimable aid of those Friends of the Fleet, the 
drifters. 

So the picket boat detailed for net-defence duty 
would be called away ; generally towing a cutter 
with a derrick rigged in the stern sheets for the 
purpose of raising to the surface the weighty gear 
submerged. The officer in charge and the boat's 
crew, all in heavy oilskins, clambered down into the 
boat and shoved off, driving into the heavy waves 
which covered the plunging boat with lashing cur- 
tains of spray. 

Out beyond, at the spot for which the boat was 
making, one could just see a welter of grey, and 
knew that there the waves were tumbling much 
more ominously than here at the ship's side. 

In such a delectable spot the work had to be 
done. Often with a heavy rain beating down and 
an icy wind blowing hard. To find the parted and 
semi-sunken wires, grapple them to the surface, 

61 



The Curtain of Steel 



join, and refloat them, was a task that sorely tried 
the tempers of all concerned, as may well be imag- 
ined ; and the one and only good point about the 
job was that it occasionally excused people from 
the still more unpleasant task of coaling ship when 
the Fleet came in from one of its frequent — its very 
frequent — cruises . 

4 

" Why they don't bring out their destroyers and 
attack us, heaven alone knows ! " Madden remarked 
in high disgust one day when it fell to his lot to go 
and repair the net defence. " These silly bits of 
string wouldn't stop a Thames rowing-boat from 
getting in ! 'Sides, if that's what they're afraid 
of, why didn't they come along before we got it 
started ? It might have saved us all this trouble, 
if they had ! " 

14 You ought to be jolly thankful they haven't 
tried it on," someone said to him ; "if their des- 
troyers had got inf they might have bent a few of 
our battleships pretty badly ! " 

" Well, and s'pose they had ? It's all in the day's 
work, isn't it i And we shouldn't have had to go 
fooling about with this beastly net defence any 
longer ! I really do wonder why they haven't 
come ! " 

Many other people shared Madden's wonder, 
though not perhaps his motive, and have not yet 
ceased wondering. If a battleship action was worth 
risking by the Germans in those early days, a night 

62 



The Curtain in Place 



attack by their destroyers upon our base was still 
more easily possible for them and might have won 
for them results as great or greater. We were very 
short of destroyers at the beginning of the war ; 
the Germans were strong in them, and were not 
under the necessity, as we were, of separating their 
flotillas and diverting some of them to other bases 
for various purposes. 

i\.mongst ourselves it was always a recognised 
belief that the German destroyer-officers were a 
very highly-trained lot of men, full also of dash 
and daring, and that the destroyer branch was the 
most expert and specialised of the whole German 
Navy. Any of our naval officers would have wil- 
lingly conceded, four years ago, that the German 
destroyer fellows were at least the equal of our own 
— and, some added, probably better. 

There is a certain pleasurable interest in letting 
the imagination run riot on — What might have 
happened. Thank goodness, it did not happen ; 
but the history-books of the future might very easily 
have had such a tale as this to tell : 

" A swarm of German destroyers came swiftly 
across the North Sea, taking advantage of a day 
when fog and rain rendered the visibility very low. 
Every available boat had been raked up to increase 
the force, and the total number cannot have been 
much under a couple of hundred. Their com- 
manders had summoned the crews before starting, 
and had told them that a return to Germany was 
not to be expected ; but in such an enterprise as 

63 



The Curtain of Steel 



this, where the gain and the glory were so great, the 
brave adventurers were very willing to give up all 
hopes of seeing again their beloved Fatherland. 

"Such British patrols as were encountered near 
the coast were either destroyed, not without loss 
to the German flotillas, or else were driven in ; 
they contrived, however, to give the alarm by 
wireless, but by this time the enemy was so close 
to his objective that very little time was left for 
taking measures of precaution other than those in 
ordinary use. 

64 The rocks and currents of the Pentland Firth 
took toll of the mosquito Armada from the very 
moment it entered that dangerous bottle-neck, 
some of the boats collided with one another, and 
others piled themselves up on the iron-bound shores. 
The British destroyers, dashing out to meet them, 
accounted for many more but were hopelessly out- 
numbered, and when these were all sunk or crippled 
the remnant of the German flotillas was still a mighty 
force in spite of losses. 

" At the narrow entrance of the harbour a further 
number was accounted for. By this time the dark- 
ness had completely set in, and though this proved 
fatal to some of the destroyers it enabled the greater 
number of them to reach the defences in safety. 
Here more of them were lost, and it was a greatly 
depleted force that finally succeeded in making its 
way into the harbour. Depleted, indeed, but still 
very formidable. It is impossible to say how many 
they were that actually penetrated the inner de- 

64 



The Curtain in Place 



fences ; some accounts estimate their number 
at a hundred, while others place it as low as 
thirty. 

44 And now the guns of the anchored Fleet began 
to speak, and searchlight beams swept the dark 
waters to pick up the on-coming enemy. Destroyer 
after destroyer became the target of concentrated 
salvoes and blew up, the explosion of her own 
magazines mingling with the bursting of the shells 
that rained thickly against her side. 

4 But a louder roar was soon heard above the 
roar of the gunfire. A torpedo, or several torpedoes 
at once, got home on one of the great battleships, 
and a sheet of flame towered high into the blackness 
of the night as the ship blew up with a deafening 
thunder. 

4 Falling debris and rolling clouds of oily black 
smoke made instant confusion in the other battle- 
ships, especially those nearest in the line, rendering 
their fire ineffectual and veiling their searchlights. 

4 This was the Germans' chance, a chance they 
were not slow to seize. Every moment their 
numbers were being lessened, and wherever a ray 
of searchlight struck the water it showed up a 
tangle of floating wreckage mingled with the bodies 
of men. But those boats that were left still above 
water made full use of their advantage. A few 
moments after the blowing up of the first battle- 
ship, another one fell a victim to the torpedoes of 
the persistent attack, and then another, and another ; 
and each time the resultant confusion growing 

65 



The Curtain of Steel 



greater, the difficulties of the attacking craft were 
proportionally lessened. 

"It is a marvel that any of the British battle- 
ships escaped ; and equally a marvel that any of 
the German destroyers should have been able to 
find their way out of the harbour again and even- 
tually reach home. Only five of them, it is believed, 
succeeded in doing so ; and the crews of these 
five were justly loaded with all the honours that 
Germany could heap upon them as the men who 
had determined the whole course of the war by their 
swift and daring stroke." 

Well, as I have said, it is perhaps a very good 
thing that the German Admiralty was too cautious 
to venture such an enterprise. Of course, it might 
have turned out quite differently from the above 
imaginative phantasy ; but then, again, it mightn't. 



I had almost forgotten to mention the fact that 
a Fleet action upon the largest possible scale really 
did take place soon after the commencement of the 
war — the newspapers said so, and therefore it must 
be true ! 

It seems almost inexcusable to have forgotten the 
precise details of such a momentous occurrence, but 
I regret to say that I have done so, or, at least, I 
cannot state them with any certainty ; but, to the 
best of my recollection, the whole of the German 
Fleet was sent to the bottom, and the price of our 

66 



The Curtain in Place 



victory was seventeen of our latest battleships. 
It is curious how such a thing could have hap- 
pened without our knowledge ; but apparently it 
must have done so, for our first information on the 
subject came through a wireless Press message. It 
made very interesting reading. 

Some time afterwards we learnt how the story 
originated. Two enterprising gentlemen living some- 
where in South America, finding themselves hard up 
for a little ready cash, conceived the bright idea 
of making some by means of a big newspaper 
'' scoop." There were, however, two great obstacles 
in the way ; first, that they did not happen to know 
of any important item of news and had no prospect 
of being able to gain inside information of any such 
thing ; and secondly, that the local newspapers 
would probably take the greater part of the profits, 
supposing an exclusive piece of news should chance 
to crop up. 

These obstacles did not daunt the two bright 
lads, who surmounted them by the simple process 
of inventing their own news and publishing their 
own newspaper ! 

Two days' issues of this paper were printed, one 
of them containing the account of the Great Fleet 
Action ; and on the third day the ingenious pro- 
prietors, having achieved their purpose and made 
their fortune, closed the office of the paper and retired 
from business. 

A large number of continental papers copied the 
thrill for their readers. For that matter, a large 

67 



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number of English readers got a good thrill out of 
it, and one which lasted for quite a long time. I 
met, long afterwards, someone who was at that time 
in an isolated ship on a far distant station, who told 
me that when he and his shipmates read the account 
in the wireless Press Message, they quite believed 
it, or, at any rate, were not inclined to disbelieve 
it, and were not able to verify or contradict any 
wireless news until the arrival of the English papers, 
many weeks later. So this highly-coloured effort 
of imagination, even if it afterwards proved illu- 
sive, provided an exciting topic of conversation for 
many people for a good many weeks, after all ! 



6 

Mention of Wireless Press Messages reminds me 
of a great scheme started by our methodical and 
painstaking Fleet Paymaster with regard to them. 

They were received by the wireless operators 
usually in more or less disjointed and imperfect 
form, and afterwards written out and copied for 
the various officers' messes and ship's notice-boards. 

The Fleet Paymaster thought it would be a 
good scheme to collect them all, day by day, and 
re-write them neatly in a book. We all approved 
of this heartily, especially as he volunteered to do 
all the work himself. It would be very handy, 
we said, to possess such a book for reference ; it 
would form a complete and concise history of the 
war, which we should be able to consult if we should 

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wish to settle some disputed point or to freshen our 
memories on any subjects and events we might 
chance to forget ; and when the war was over the 
volume would furnish an interesting and valuable 
memento. 

So we encouraged the Fleet Paymaster to begin 
the task ; not that he needed any encouragement, 
as he was really very keen about it, being one of 
those kindly people who are always on the look 
out to do anything that would give pleasure to the 
rest of the mess. 

About two years afterwards we happened one 
day to find the book ; we opened its pages with 
reverent amusement, regarding it as a relic of the 
past and a monument to our stupendous ignorance 
of the extent of the war. The book was nearly 
filled, the written pages all penned neatly and 
carefully ; but the record did not spread over more 
than a very few weeks. It stopped suddenly, at 
a time when the painstaking amanuensis realised 
that to complete the task he would have to fill 
not one book but at least a hundred, at the rate the 
war was progressing and as the flood of Press Mes- 
sages became ever greater and greater ! 

At the beginning, these messages came mostly 
from one single source and were limited to one a 
day ; but afterwards we received them officially 
from several different wireless stations, and also 
picked them up from various stations in foreign 
countries ; these we were generally able to trans- 
late, as amongst the members of our mess there 

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were several who could compete with most of the 
more common European languages. 

There was also a daily message compiled by some 
imaginative gentleman from the headlines of a small 
local Scotch newspaper. 

What with these, and others sent along by the 
Flagship, it may easily be imagined the work of 
compiling and re-writing them all would have been 
one man's job, and in the course of a year or so 
would have flooded the ship with volumes. So it 
is no wonder that the Fleet Paymaster gave it up 
in despair ! 

One thing was very noticeable about all these 
Press Messages, namely, that they were invariably 
far more exciting than the newspapers which fol- 
lowed a day or two later and related the same events 
at greater length. Indeed, it frequently happened 
that some really tremendous announcement would 
appear in the Press Message, making us quite eager 
to read the full details in the paper when it should 
arrive ; and when the paper came we had to hunt 
carefully through its pages, only to find after a 
long search some small paragraph about the affair 
tucked away in an obscure corner. But I think 
that this must have been due to the kindly heart 
of the compiler of the wireless news, who wished 
to cheer us up with an exciting tit-bit on days when 
there was no big news : he probably thought that 
by the time we received the newspapers something 
important might really have happened to interest 
us, and then everything would be all square. 

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I do not know whether I have succeeded in my 
attempt to convey the idea of Newness which per- 
vaded all our actions at this period. This Newness 
coloured everything we did and said and thought ; 
our enthusiasms were very young, our plans and 
precautions of the freshest possible kind. When 
I say that this freshness wore off afterwards I do 
not mean that we became any less keen ; but, as 
was bound to happen, our growing familiarity with 
the situation produced in time the effect of lessen- 
ing the tension, taking the ingredient of excitement 
out of the mixture of our days, and causing us to 
make not quite so much heavy weather over things 
in general as we had done at the beginning. 

One very good instance of this was seen in the 
character of our earliest letters home. The censor- 
ship, instituted from the very start, was one of the 
few things that differentiated our war-routine from 
that of peace, and it would not be true to say that 
we did not feel it a little irksome at the beginning, 
though we quite realised that it was a necessary 
evil, since it was highly important that no details 
should leak out concerning our movements and 
doings, and some people are so very communicative 
and chatty in their epistles ! Naturally, this cen- 
sorship extended to the letters of officers as well as 
men, and all of us in the wardroom were obliged to 
submit the outpourings of our bosoms to the scrutin- 
ising eye of a selected censor. 

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The Curtain of Steel 

Having swallowed this disagreeable necessity, 
of course we played up to it with infinitely more 
strictness than was really called for ; inasmuch 
that some who had previously been in the habit of 
sending home a daily budget of affectionately - 
worded memoirs now limited themselves to a post- 
card without mention of date, ship, or place, and 
expressed in some such words as : 

" Dear M, 

Am quite well and flourishing. 
Hope you are the same. 
Everything quite all right here. 
Yours, 
N." 

What the wives and sweethearts thought about 
such missives as these I can only imagine ! I sup- 
pose they thought that anything was better than 
nothing, but it must have been a sore trial to some 
of them to receive these exceedingly dry bones of 
correspondence in place of the full epistolary meal 
to which they had been accustomed. 

However, there were certain delinquents even 
among the officers who, from sheer carelessness and 
inability to accustom themselves to the new state 
of affairs, proved that the censorship was not a 
needless formality. 

Hotham, the Captain of Marines, was one of 
these. He had a wife, to whom he used to send, 
whenever he was at sea, a full and faithful account 
of his daily doings ; judging by the rueful face of 

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the censor when the latter began to deal with his 
letters, I should think he must have written them 
more or less in the form of a Diary of the Great War, 
omitting no detail of any importance whatever. 

The censoring officer was much put to it to con- 
vey tactfully his brutal verdict that the letter could 
not be allowed to pass quite as it was written. But 
he felt bound to say, " Look here, old bird — hang 
it all, you know — but this, what you have said here, 
why, it's — you really can't — I'm frightfully sorry, 
but I'm afraid this will have to come out, and this, 
and this ! " 

■ Why, bless my sweet eyes " — (I take leave to 
amend Hot ham's peculiar phraseology) — " I never 
thought there was any roseate harm in saying that ! 
But cut it out, by all means, old man, if you think 
so. Go ahead and snip the blithering thing as much 
as ever you like. Tell me though, just as a rough 
guide, what can I write, and what mustn't I write ? " 

'Well, on general principles, you mustn't say, 

- Yes, no, nor nay, 
Black, white, nor grayT 

14 Eh ? " — Hot ham's face took on a look of blank 
wonderment. 

4 Oh, that's a quotation from a children's game. 
I mean that you had better think of all the things 
you would naturally like to write about, and then 
make up your mind those are the very things you 
are not allowed to mention." 

" But, hang it all, what can I say, then ? " 

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ct 



Oh, well, you will be perfectly safe in writing 
about the weather, or the state of your liver, or 
what you had for dinner last night. Any little 
items of that sort." 

"Well, I'm " Even Hotham's highly-culti- 
vated gift of ornate utterance failed him here. 

Trythall also refused to adopt the Spartan sim- 
plicity of the postcard and persisted in writing 
voluminous letters, but they gave no trouble to the 
censor. He came in person to bring his first letter 
for inspection, and blushed apologetically ; "I 
always write in that style to my missus," he said, 
" and I don't see why I should stop doing so now — 
of course I really don't mind your reading 'em right 
through if you want to." 

The censoring officer glanced at the opening words 
of the letter. What these words were I cannot say, 
as I did not see them ; but I suspect they were 
in the style which a good many naval officers 
adopt when writing to their wives ; sailor 
husbands never cease to be sweethearts, so the 
proverb says. 

The censor closed the letter without reading 
further. He was an old bachelor and rather cynical 
as a rule in his remarks about the fair sex. " I 
might be writing in that style now perhaps, if I 
had had any luck," was all he said on this occasion. 
And this remark was the only hint we ever had that 
a spoilt romance in the past was responsible for 
both his bachelorhood and his cynicism. 



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8 

The earliest naval losses of the war, the sinking 
of the Speedy, the Pathfinder, and the Hawke, 
brought home to us, more than anything else had 
yet done, the stern realities of the conflict on which 
we were only now just entering. Being the first 
losses of the sort they were proportionately magni- 
fied in our minds, and made a far deeper impression 
than the much greater losses which occurred later. 

Yet, I suppose, I ought to have expressed this 
in quite the opposite way and said that the later 
losses became minified by our distorted vision 
when time had dulled our mental outlook and we 
had become not so much callous as accustomed 
to such things. 

For in truth, as we felt at the time, had such 
disasters occurred during the period of peace, the 
whole world would have been appalled by them ; 
the newspapers would have had full-page accounts 
of the dreadful losses, and telegrams of sympathy 
would have been sent by the governments of all 
nations ; the Kaiser himself would have been for- 
ward in sending one. 

But now, we could not help thinking how curious 
it was that millions of people should actually be 
feeling glad that so many human beings had been 
drowned ; nor did we disguise from ourselves the 
fact that we should have been glad if the victims 
were Germans. In fact, when the Hela was sunk 
we really were very glad indeed. But in those days 

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we had the grace to be introspective about it, and 
to realise the curiousness of our being glad. After- 
wards, we did not take the trouble to think so much 
about it. 

A thing which is little realised, I suppose, by the 
general public is that any naval disaster comes 
home as a personal loss to every single ship in the 
Navy, almost to every single officer and man. We 
are not like the Army, where the fellows of one 
particular regiment can rarely form a long acquaint- 
ance with other Army men outside their own par- 
ticular regiment. Owing to our constant inter- 
changing, and being, as a rule, certainly not more 
than a couple of years in any one ship, we knock 
up against a great number of our brother naval 
officers ; and every added year of service means a 
more widely extended circle of friends and acquaint- 
ances. 

So, when a ship is lost, you may be pretty certain 
that in every wardroom throughout the whole Navy 
someone will be found to remark : " Poor old So- 
and so — yes, I knew him very well ; I was ship- 
mate with him once for about a year ; darned good 
chap he was, too ! " 

It was so in the case of these earliest naval losses. 
Directly we heard of them our first impulse was to 
turn up the Navy List and see if there was anybody 
we knew in the ships that were lost ; a knot of us, 
with heads crowded together, would be poring over 
the book, all trying to read it at once ; and some- 
times one of us would suddenly leave the group and 

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turn away in silence. He had seen the name of 
one whom he knew and loved. 

But, of course, it did not always necessarily 
follow that every soul was lost with the ship. There 
were survivors, many of them having had almost 
miraculous escapes. 

One of these I met not long after. When his ship 
went down he was amongst a party that had taken 
refuge on a raft. It was a large raft, and a great 
number of men had crowded into it. For the 
present their lives were saved, but their position 
was not much more enviable than that of their 
comrades who had gone down with the ship ; in- 
deed, to some extent it was much less enviable, 
for those others had at least found a quick and 
merciful death, whereas these poor wretches had 
little prospect beyond that of dying after a lingering 
torture. 

They were in the middle of the North Sea, and 
without means of propelling their frail craft. A 
vessel might chance to find them and rescue them, 
or it might not. Meanwhile, they were up to their 
waists in water, and the water was bitterly cold. 
A keen wind was blowing, too ; and, when the 
waves dashed over them, the cutting wind piercing 
their wet clothing was an agony without cessation. 

Only in one way could any relief be had, and 
that was a method followed by the survivor whom 
I met ; he got over the side of the raft and lowered 
himself down into the water till all but his head 
was submerged, clinging with his hands to the rope 

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beckets at the side of the raft. In this position the 
cold was not so keenly felt as when standing soaked 
through in the icy wind. 

At intervals he was obliged to clamber upon the 
raft again, for it was not possible to remain clinging 
like this for very long at a time. During these 
intervals he exercised himself by chafing the limbs 
of the others near him, in the effort to keep life in 
them. Half frozen himself, and weakened by 
exposure, he could not do very much of this before 
getting exhausted and needing to take a rest. 
Once he held a brother officer in his arms and tried 
to cheer him up and keep the spirit alive in him, 
though it seemed almost a hopeless task, the poor 
fellow being almost at his last gasp. 

" Rub me, oh, rub my arms," whispered the 
sufferer. He complied at once, and kept on as 
long as he was able, but presently was forced to 
stop. 

" Oh, don't stop ! Keep on rubbing my arms : 
I shall die if you don't ! " 

He made a supreme effort and forced himself to 
renew his task. But the stimulation of his will 
was not sufficient to urge his utterly wearied flesh ; 
presently his arms refused to work, and fell limp 
at his sides. As they did so the other man gave a 
groan and collapsed, falling off the raft, and sank 
beneath the waves. Others had fallen before this, 
and more still fell before the rescue of the surviving 
few was effected . Eighteen hours of this awful agony 
before the rescue came ! 

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And the one of whom I write turned out the 
next morning as fresh as a daisy, and at once dashed 
up to the Admiralty to ask for another ship. He 
was not a penny the worse for his adventure, and 
had not even caught a cold ; but there were few 
that had his strength. 



I have in my possession a pocket atlas which was 
on any bookshelf at the beginning of the war, and 
came in very useful during the whole time I was 
in the ship. It was very frequently in requisition 
on account of its containing a map not often found 
in volumes of this description, namely, a full-page 
map of the North Sea. 

This page clearly shows from its begrimed appear- 
ance that it has had more use than any other in 
the atlas. It is scored with pencil-lines half rubbed 
out, tracing the course taken by the Fleet on cruise 
after cruise, and there are dots marking the position 
of rendezvous, with times noted against them, and 
the precise spots where we were, or where we ex- 
pected to be at certain hours. 

These semi-obliterated markings cover the greater 
part of the page. They are the witnesses to a 
vast amount of steaming over the length and 
breadth of the North Sea. 

Hitherto I have, for the most part, touched upon 
the various aspects of the life of the Fleet in war 
time, as it was when the ships were in harbour. 

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I have tried, so to speak, to take the reader up 
to our Northern Base and show him how things 
were there at the beginning. But it must ever be 
remembered that from the earliest days we spent 
far more time at sea than we did in harbour. 

Afterwards, matters changed considerably, and 
it became not only practicable but desirable to 
spend a longer time in harbour ; at the beginning, 
though, we kept the seas almost continually, both 
from choice and from necessity. 

From necessity, because our anchorage was as yet 
insecure from attack, as I have already said ; and 
from choice, because we desired to meet the enemy's 
battle-fleet, and join action with him whenever he 
might choose to come out and show himself. 

On the average, we used to go to sea for five 
days, come back and coal ship, sometimes spending 
less than twenty-four hours in harbour, and then 
off to sea again. We kept up this routine for 
months ; and, although it was at times rather 
strenuous and not a little wearistfme, I think none 
of us can say now, looking back upon it, that we 
did not enjoy it after a fashion, and it was certainly 
a good deal better than doing nothing. 

People at home, our own folks, knew nothing 
about these constant cruises ; we were not allowed 
to mention them, of course, and it was not even 
permissible to state in our letters that we had been 
coaling ship, as this would reveal the fact that 
we were in harbour at the date of posting the letter, 
and were about to start on another sea- trip. 

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The general public, of course, was still less aware 
of our movements at this time ; and, for the matter 
of that, is probably unable to appreciate even to 
the present day the constant activity of the Fleet 
in the early months of the war — an activity which 
still continues, though now it is not required to be 
kept up to such a degree as it was then. 

Wje never knew ourselves exactly when we were 
to leave harbour. The ships always had steam 
ready at short notice, and the first indication that 
our brief stay — I cannot call it rest — at our anchorage 
was finished for another few days was a signal from 
the flagship to raise steam for so many knots. 

" You had better have steam on the capstan at 
such-and-such a time," the Captain would then tell 
the Engineer-Commander, with a view to working 
the cables. 

The eyes of the signalmen were already keenly 
on the look-out for a string of fluttering bunting 
at the flagship's yard-arm. Up would go the signal 
to be hauled down a little later, and then we began 
to move. 

Squadron followed squadron through the entrance, 
moving at short intervals, each with its component 
ships in line ahead. 

A very imposing sight it was to watch the ships 
leaving harbour in this fashion. From the quarter- 
deck of one's own ship the foremost ships of the 
line could be seen rounding the bend and already 
becoming dim in the distance, so great was the 
length of the line. Then, right astern, another 

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The Curtain of Steel 



mighty vessel was seen shearing the waves with its 
lofty stern, and throwing out a white bow-wave 
which streamed outwards and backwards on either 
side. Sometimes, if there was anything of a swell 
running, the next astern would rise till her forefoot 
was quite out of the water, seeming to be towering 
upwards as if anxious to advance and come down 
upon us with a cleaving blow ; but I suppose the 
watch-keepers would not like me to say this, as 
they are very particular about station-keeping and 
are a little touchy about any suspicion of not keeping 
their exact distance apart at all times. Still that 
is what it looked like. 

It was at such times, when under way and near 
the land, that the ships presented the rriost imposing 
appearance ; out at sea, with no other objects near 
by which to form a comparison, they looked sur- 
prisingly small. I have often noticed this, how a 
huge vessel of some twenty-five thousand tons and 
six hundred feet in length would appear, at sea, no 
bigger than one of the old 'Royal Sovereigns or 
Majesties ; but this, I take it, is due to the beautiful 
lines on which these modern battleships are designed. 

Of course the ships themselves were darkened. 
No masthead steaming lights, no navigation lights 
were allowed to be shown. The ships were, in fact, 
in total darkness. Officers of the watch had to 
keep their proper station in the line merely by 
sighting the dim loom of the next ahead — for dark- 
ness is rarely so thick that this becomes impossible ; 
at such times, when the pitchy blackness of the 

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night shut off even the faintest glimpse of the ship 
ahead, a barrel-buoy would be streamed out at the 
end of a long line by every ship, and this, trailed 
just in front of the bows of the next astern, would 
create a little tumbling swirl of white water, that 
could be plainly descried from the bridge of the 
following ship. 

All other lights, such as those of cabin scuttles, 
were, of course, obscured also. Before sailing, the 
men of the ship's carpenter's staff came round to 
every mess and cabin, and secured the deadlights 
firmly down, allowing no chink to remain through 
which a ray of light might penetrate. 

Occasionally one ship would make a short 
wireless signal to another : " You are showing a 
light on the port quarter," or some similar message ; 
and then there would be a most careful search for 
the cause of it. Frequently it was some deadlight 
not quite tightly secured. Once it was a tiny 
screw-hole, where the drip-catcher beneath a cabin 
scuttle had carried away and the screw had fallen 
out ; the resulting hole allowed the light from the 
electric bulb in the cabin to pour out like a tiny 
searchlight ; not so tiny, however, but what it 
was clearly visible a mile away ! This shows how 
exceedingly careful we had to be. To smoke a 
lighted cigarette on the upper deck was absolutely 
forbidden ; much more to strike a match. And 
those who needed to make their way about the deck 
had to grope in the darkness, getting their sense of 
locality corrected from time to time by bumping 

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into various obstacles recognisable by their shape — 
and their feel. 

10 

When clear of the Pent land Firth the Fleet took 
up its assigned formation, and proceeded on its 
destined course. That course might be anywhere 
in the North Sea — L and after many such cruises we 
might almost say that we had been everywhere in 
the North Sea. A chart which should contain all 
our many tracks marked would show a big network 
of lines leaving very little of this vast area un- 
covered — East, West, North, and South. From 
well up beyond the Shetlands we swept close down 
to Heligoland, from the Yorkshire coast over to- 
wards Denmark. 

But never once did we set eyes on the " High 
Seas " Fleet. That much- vaunted force would on 
rare occasions creep out close to the Frisian Islands, 
sometimes even getting as far as Terschelling ; but 
always making quite sure of being able to nip 
back home again before it could by any possibility 
be intercepted. 

On a fine day the Fleet at sea was a truly mag- 
nificent sight when steaming at full speed. It gave 
such an impression of Power. The sea appeared to 
be covered with the vast assemblage of ships — 
battleships, battle cruisers, armoured cruisers, light 
cruisers, and destroyers ; so many of them that the 
circle of sea which could be viewed from the height 
of the deck was not sufficient to hold them all? 

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many of them being well below the horizon, and 
only indicating their presence by a faint band of 
smoke in the sky. I am speaking now of a time 
when the Fleet was much smaller than it after- 
wards became ; even in those early days it afforded 
a deeply impressive sight which one never tired of 
watching. 

One of the earliest of these frequent sweeps of 
the North Sea was on the occasion of the affair of 
the Heligoland Bight, when our light craft, followed 
by some of the battle cruisers, went well inside, 
and chewed up everything they could find of the 
enemy's vessels. It was a very thrilling and enjoy- 
able time for those who had the good fortune to 
be active participators in the affair, no doubt. But 
it had a further purpose than this : it was a trailing 
of our coat, an invitation to the enemy to bring out 
his heavier forces and see what he could do. We, 
the big ships, were waiting outside for him. But 
he prudently declined the invitation on this, as on 
all future occasions, and as we could not stay an 
indefinite time, we were forced to go home again 
with the reflection, " No luck." Getting back to 
the base did not mean much in the way of rest and 
ease. Colliers were waiting for us there, and as 
soon as we had dropped anchor they came along- 
side, and the whole ship's company had to set to 
and start the unpleasant operation of coaling. 

In peace time an average coaling once a month 
used to be reckoned rather a bore ; but now, when 
it took place every four or five days, some rather 

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stronger terms were needed to describe it. Imagine 
for yourself, the men who had just completed a 
strenuous voyage of several hundred miles, stoking, 
watchkeeping, and carrying out all the other varied 
duties of the ships ; then having to start in and 
get anything up to a thousand tons of coal on board 
in quick time, sometimes in a snowstorm, and 
generally with half a gale blowing. Yet the extra- 
ordinary thing is that after a few times the men 
seemed really to enjoy doing it ; at any rate, they 
went about it with the vim and cheeriness of men 
engaged in some agreeable form of athletic sports, 
singing and cracking jokes all the while. 

But it was trying work. Sometimes the coaling 
continued far into the night, too late to think about 
cleaning ship before the morning ; at such times I 
have seen the mess-deck thick with sleeping men, 
who had flung themselves down just as they were 
amongst the coal dust, themselves so black with it 
that they could scarcely be distinguished from the 
deck itself in the dim light which the electric lamps 
gave in that coal-laden atmosphere. 

Cleaning ship was little less arduous than the 
coaling which occasioned it, though not so lengthy. 
After that came the operation of provisioning ship, 
which meant taking in stores for a thousand or so 
men, no light job, as may be understood. And, on 
occasions, the trilogy was completed by the process 
of ammunitioning ship, when the weighty projectiles 
had to be taken on board and lowered down care- 
fully to be stowed in the magazines, 

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However, in spite of these trifles, there was a 
good deal of pleasure in getting back to harbour 
for ever so brief a spell. For one thing, there was 
always the mail to look forward to — unless it 
happened to be blowing so hard that the picket- 
boat could not go to get it from the depot ship. 
Bags and bags of mails, letters, and parcels ! It 
was always a cheery moment when they were heard 
dumping on the deck as they came rolling down 
the iron ladder leading from an upper deck hatch- 
way. Then the ship's corporals would take charge 
of them and open them up in the post office, where 
the deck soon became piled high with the accumu- 
lating heap of letters and papers. Some of the 
officers, the junior ones especially, could not wait 
patiently till the sorting was completed, but used 
to gather round the door of the little compartment, 
and even invade it, though they were not supposed 
to do so, hoping to get an early chance of picking 
out an eagerly looked-for letter. 

But when we managed to restrain ourselves, we 
would sit around the ante-room, doing anything or 
nothing at all, pretending not to be over anxious 
about the letters, but all the time only waiting for 
them to appear. Each time the door opened, every 
face would be turned towards it, and if it should 
chance to be only another officer entering there was 
ill-disguised disappointment. But when at last one 
of the ship's corporals entered, his arms stacked full 
of mails, everyone jumped up eagerly, and it was 
generally a race who should be first to relieve him 

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of his burden and spread it out on a place cleared 
for it on the card table. In a very few minutes 
every letter was appropriated by its rightful owner, 
and the deck littered with torn envelopes — for I 
regret to say that naval officers are not really as 
tidy as popular opinion believes them to be — while 
a general hush fell upon the mess, as each man 
read eagerly his own desired news from Home. 

But, oh, the glum face of the officer who was 
not lucky enough to get a letter ! Well, at any 
rate, he could grab all the picture papers and get 
first chance at reading them, sitting upon such as 
he had not yet looked at. This was the only satis- 
faction that any such unfortunate member was able 
to enjoy, and he usually made full use of it ! 

11 

When the stay in harbour was not quite so much 
abbreviated a certain amount of exercise and 
amusement was to be had ashore. The island of 
Flotta — a Norse name meaning Flat Island — was 
well adapted for this, and the western part of it, 
which forms a peninsula, was taken over by the 
Admiralty to serve as a recreation ground for the 
Fleet. A number of fdotball grounds were marked 
out for the men, and pavilions were run up where 
they could find shelter and purchase refreshments. 

For the officers a golf course was laid out, or 
rather they laid it out for themselves. It was an 
eight een-hole course, and although it was fairly 

88 



The Curtain in Place 



rough there were many worse ones, and in course 
of time it became greatly improved, each ship 
making itself responsible for the upkeep of a green. 
The popularity of this golf course was amazing ; 
often on a fine day one might put a ball in and wait 
a couple of hours before being able to commence 
play. It was certainly a godsend to all devotees 
of the game, and not to them alone but to their 
ungolfing messmates ; for many a time a mouldy- 
minded pessimist having cast a blight over his little 
world for the whole of the forenoon would go ashore 
and work his liver off in a round of golf and come 
back on board transformed into a proper little ray 
of sunshine. 

In connection with the golf game there is a story 
told which may or may not be true ; I am not in a 
position to judge, so you can believe it or not just 
as you like. It is, that certain of the German sub- 
marine officers, cruising in Scottish waters, used to 
bring their vessels close inshore near certain well- 
known golf links every Saturday afternoon ; and, 
having changed into plain clothes, pulled ashore in 
their skiff and played a round or two of golf. It is 
a good story, and I should like to believe it. 

There were times when the weather made all 
shore-going impossible. It would hardly be credited 
how heavy a sea can get up, and very quickly too, 
in the inland waters of the Orkneys. " Let go 
second anchor," became quite a common signal as 
the winter drew in with its constant gales. Even 
this precaution was frequently not enough. One 

89 



The Curtain of Steel 



wild night a merchant steamer dragged and was 
swept across a battleship's bows, foundering shortly 
after ; and another, dragging likewise, was wrecked 
on the shore of one of the islands. Even the heavy 
anchors and cables of the men-of-war were powerless 
against the tremendous force of wind and sea, and 
it was often found necessary to steam at the rate of 
twelve knots in order to prevent dragging. 

That first winter was worse than any which 
followed, in respect of the weather ; which, in a sense, 
was just as well, since it enabled us to put up with 
the succeeding ones with comparative satisfaction 
and content. Moreover, we had more of the amen- 
ities of life when things had once settled down a 
little. 

12 

Admiral Jellicoe, in one of his recent speeches, has 
told how the merchant-ships in attendance on the 
Fleet more than once came to the rescue of the 
battleships at their anchorage when there happened 
to be a submarine scare. 

" Scare " is hardly the right word to use, for that 
denotes some meaning of panic, and panic there was 
none. A rumour of submarines, then. 

It is no wonder that such rumours occasionally 
arose ; the real wonder is that they did not arise 
every day. For it is so very easy to see a periscope 
where no periscope exists, especially if you have 
been knocking about in a picket boat for hours, with 
your eyes strained to catch sight of such a thing. 

90 



The Curtain in Place 



And, with the harbour-defences in the embryonic 
state they were, no rumour could be dismissed as 
wildly impossible ; if anyone on patrol said he 
believed an enemy submarine had made its way into 
the harbour, then all precautions had to be taken 
with the same care as if this entrance were an abso- 
lute certainty. 

On these occasions the merchant-ships, especially 
the colliers, got under way with all despatch and 
ranged themselves alongside the men-of-war, form- 
ing protective buttresses, ready to receive the impact 
of a torpedo if by so doing they might shelter and 
save the ships of war. 

The colliers themselves were of course without 
any protection whatsoever. Supposing a torpedo 
had got home on theni they must infallibly have 
been destroyed. However, it was infinitely more 
important that the men-of-war should not be, 
destroyed, so this arrangement of the weak shelter- 
ing the strong was accepted by the crews of the 
colliers as part of their duty. What strange and 
varied happenings the merchant -service coolly 
accepts as all in the day's work is, I suppose, known 
to none but the men of the merchant-service them- 
selves ; but I make bold to say that never was a 
stranger call than this made upon them. And they 
took it with the calm courageous indifference of the 
British seaman ; it was open to them to leave their 
ships tied up alongside and take shelter themselves 
on board the men-of-war ; but I never heard of a 
single one of them doing so. 

G 91 



The Curtain of Steel 



13 

Meredyth came to me one day with a letter in his 
hand. The mail had just been served out. 

" Read this, old man," he said with a grin, " and 
tell me how I ought to answer it ; I'm arotten hand 
at letter-writing." 

I glanced at the last page, which chanced to be 
uppermost as he passed the letter to me, and read 
the signature, " Marjorie Daw." 

"Is it meant for me to read, do you think ? " I 
asked. 

" Oh, that's all right, old man," answered the 
Oaf ; "I shan't be able to answer it properly unless 
someone helps me out, and I'd rather it was you 
than some other silly ass." 

Persuaded by this doubtful compliment I turned 
to the beginning of the letter and read : 

" Dear Mr. Meredyth, — I was meaning to 
write you a proper letter, a long one, with lots 
and lots of news in it — really and truly I was, 
and I was going to stop at home most virtuously 
all this afternoon to do it. But now I have to 
make it quite a different sort of letter altogether, 
'cause I don't know if you will ever get it. Fact 
is, we had a terrible scare yesterday. There was 
a rumour in the town that your ship had been 
sunk. Nobody seemed to know how, or where ; 
but everybody was quite certain that it was true. 
I didn't pay much attention to the rumour at 

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The Curtain in Place 



first, but as the day went on and the yarn was 
still not contradicted I began to feel just the least 
little teeny bit anxious about you. Now, do say 
you think it was nice of me to be so sympathetic. 
Well, after tea, there was a terrible ring at the 
front door, and who should come in but Mrs. 
Quoggs, the wife of your Gunner ! The poor soul 
was greatly agitated and really looked rather 
funny, as she had come out in red carpet slippers 
and had put her hat on backwards ; also she was 
weeping copiously, poor thing ! 

" She asked to see mother, and the maid 
showed her into the drawing-room where I was 
sitting. Of course, I didn't know her from Adam 
— or perhaps I should say, Eve ; the explanation 
came later on. But it was most embarrassing; 
then the poor creature flung her arms around my 
neck and did a sort of shrieky sob right in my ear ! 

4 What is the matter ? ' I asked, as soon as I 
could disentangle myself. 

' Oh, Miss,' she groaned in a magnificent 
hollow and blood-curdling voice, ' have you heard 
the news, the dreadful news ? ' 

6 What news ? ' said I, beginning to get just 
a wee bit nervous myself — and no wonder ! 

' Quoggs's ship has gone to the bottom, and 
every soul on board with her, so they are saying 
in town ! .' 

4 1 knew that your Gunner's name was Quoggs, 
so now I began to guess who she was and what 
she was drivingfat, 

98 



The Curtain of Steel 



" ' Oh, it's true,' she went on, c and knowing 
as how your mother was very friendly with one 
of the officers' — that was you, of course — "' I 
simply had to take the liberty of running round 
to ask if you had heard anything ! ' 

"Mother came in then, and between us we 
calmed her down as well as we could* but her 
visit left us both a bit nervy. And this morning 
we heard that there was a crowd outside the 
Western Morning News office all night long, wait- 
ing to hear something more of the rumoured 
disaster. 

" I daresay it is all very silly. But, anyhow, 
we haven't heard anything more, and Mother has 
asked me to write to ask you to write (that's an 
elegant sentence, isn't it ?) and tell us if anything 
really has happened. Because it is rather worry- 
ing, you know, when one can't hear anything 
definite, and, anyway, we do hope you are still 
above water. The ship, I mean. 

" I'll write you all the news as soon as I hear 
from you. 

" Mother sends her love. 

" Yours sincerely, 

"Marjobie Daw." 

" Silly sort of letter, isn't it ? " said the Oaf, as I 
handed it back to him. f 

" How do you mean, silly ? I call it very nice of 
her to have worried about a useless ullage like you." 

" By Jove, so it is, then ! I never thought of 

94 



The Curtain in Place 



it in that way ! But, all the same, it is a silly sort 
of letter, 'cause supposing I had been at the 
bottom of the sea, how on earth could I write and 
tell 'em about it ? " 

" Well, you needn't be so beastly critical. Write 
back and say, ' Thank ye for speerin' " 

"Eh?" ' 

14 A local idiom. It means many thanks for kind 
enquiries. Say you takes it wery kind on her to 
have put herself about so, and you're all alive and 
kicking and hope to have the pleasure of demon- 
strating the fact if ever we get a drop of leave." 

' All right, old man. If you say so. I'll go and 
write all that down now, before I forget it." 

I hope the Oaf did not express himself exactly in 
the form I suggested. But we all had occasion to 
write " words to that effect," both then and after- 
wards on several occasions. I think our ship was 
sunk exactly seven different times, according to 
rumour. The account, as Mark Twain says, was 
greatly exaggerated. There was, I believe, a small 
tug bearing the same name as our ship which was 
sunk in the Channel, and this may have been re- 
sponsible for one rumour ; but so small an event 
could hardly have been enough to sink us seven 
times ! 

However, these rumours certainly did arise and 
gained credence. Marjorie Daw's remark in her 
letter about the crowd outside the Morning News 
office was no exaggeration, but sober truth. So 
much so that certain people could hardly be con- 

95 



The Curtain of Steel 



vinced to the contrary, and when we reappeared 
eventually on leave we were made to feel, in some 
quarters, that we were a suspicious lot of impostors, 
going about pretending to be alive when by all 
rights we ought really to be at the bottom of the 
sea ! 

14 

All the world has heard by this time of the famous 
" Dummy Ships," so I am not giving away any 
secrets by mentioning them. 

We had certain of them with us, and amongst 
them one which was intended to be a replica of our 
own ship. Indeed, the resemblance was mar- 
vellous ; and whoever may have been the designer 
he must have been a man of extraordinary ingenuity 
and thoroughness to be able to transform an old 
tramp steamer into such a perfect likeness of a 
man-o'-war that it might easily deceive the eye of a 
seaman — yes, and more wonderful still, the eye of 
an airman looking down on her deck from aloft. 

It was certainly a curious experience to stand on 
the deck of one's own ship and to see her reproduced 
as if by mirage a few cables' lengths away ; only by 
a very close and long scrutiny could one detect some 
small differences which none but a sailor would be 
able to appreciate. 

But what were these Dummy Ships for ? That 
I cannot, or must not, say. Certain wags in the 
Fleet circulated a story, when they were first built, 
to the effect that Jellicoe asked the very same 

96 



The Curtain in Place 



question, and was offering a prize of ten pounds to 
anyone who could tell him what to do with them ! 

But you need not believe that story if you don't 
feel like it ; and I can add, from my own personal 
knowledge, that one of the Dummy Ships really did 
render most highly important services in a rather 
critical situation in a certain quarter of the globe 
on one occasion. I know this must read somewhat 
vaguely, but the fact remains true, though I may 
not set down the details. 

A story of another Dummy Ship, which I think 
I may tell, however, concerns the commander of a 
German submarine. This officer had been drinking 
heavily, in the effort to counteract the strain of 
being constantly chased by British destroyers. Of 
course, the more he drank the more nervous he 
became ; equally, of course, the more nervous he 
became the more he drank ; so it was not long 
before he had got himself into a pretty rocky con- 
dition. 

One day, however, he was well enough to look 
through his periscope without seeing double, and, 
much to his delight, he sighted a British man-of-war 
in such a position that she offered an easy sitting 
shot. So away went a torpedo, and the U-boat 
commander kept his eyes glued to the periscope to 
witness the explosion. Everything went off well, 
the muffled roar was plainly heard, and a huge 
column of water was seen to rise into the air at 
the side of the stricken ship. But a moment later 
the commander collapsed to the deck, his face 

97 



The Curtain of Steel 



ashen-white and twitching. His comrades rushed 
to him with alarmed enquiries. " Mein Gott ! " 
the unhappy officer replied, " I will never touch 
drink again ! I could have sworn that I saw the 
ship's turrets blown into the water and come floating 
towards me!" His repentance came too late — 
and an attack of D.T.'s was the result of his virion. 

Not long afterwards his boat was sunk by our 
patrols and he himself was made a prisoner. Then, 
with the frankness of a penitent, he related his 
experiences to his captors, and added that this 
nerve-racking mistake about the floating turrets 
would be a lesson to him for life. 

"Oh, but you didn't make any mistake, old 
sport," they told him, " that was one of our Dummy 
Ships you torpedoed ! " 

This second shock was altogether too much for 
him ; the unlucky man glared wildly around him, 
gibbered something quite unintelligible, and from 
that moment never again recovered his reason. 

This, at any rate, is how the story was told to 
me. I was careful not to spoil it by asking too 
many questions — and I hope you will be the same ! 



15 

Many thousands of miles did the Grand Fleet 
steam that autumn and early winter of the first 
year of the war. Our expectations of a great 
battle in the first fortnight had long since become 
a memory to smile over, and already the question 

98 



The Curtain in Place 



" Will the German Fleet come out ? " was estab- 
lished as a stock argument in every ward-room, 
gunroom, and mess-deck. 

There is no one who loves a debate so much as 
your Navy man ; and this particular subject was 
one which never failed to draw. In fact, it really 
divided the Navy into two opposing camps, until 
after the lapse of indecisive time both sides grew 
heartily sick of the discussion. 

But, for a time, the debate on this topic was a 
universal favourite. It took many shapes. In its 
crudest form it was often heard somewhat after this 
fashion : 

" Oh, yes, they'll come out right enough ! " 

" I bet you they don't ! " 

" They wall, you mark my words." 

" I'll eat my hat if they do ! " 

This shows the debate in its simplest, the proto- 
plasmic variety. In a more highly-developed form 
it frequently assumed organic intricacies and quite 
lurid colouring. As, for instance : 

" You must be a blithering idiot to hold such 
utterly imbecile ideas ! Come out ? Why, great 
Scott, what sort of stuff can you have inside your 
head in place of the ordinary grey matter ? " 

" Well, old man, drivel away ! I don't think I 
ever listened to such a pathetic example of a man 
descending to personal abuse when beaten in argu- 
ment. Got any more of it you would like to unload 
on me ? " 

But, as an example of the Higher Criticism^ I 

99 



The Curtain of Steel 



may as well summarise the argument as exemplified 
between our little Padre and Madden. 

The Padre was ever an optimist on the subject. 
Madden, though not entirely pessimistic, reviewed 
the matter in the clear cold light of his calculating 
vision, and concluded that a general Fleet action 
was unlikely to take place. 

" The Germans are not cowards," began the 
Padre, " they will come out — but not till it suits 
them." 

" They are not cowards," returned Madden, 
" but also they are not fools. And they will stay 
where they are." 

" Possibly they would be wise to do so ; but cir- 
cumstances will force them to come out, sooner or 
later. Their Army will demand it ; the soldiers 
will never submit to taking all the hard knocks 
and allowing the sailors to eat their heads off in 
idleness and ease. And public opinion in Germany 
won't stand it either ; when so many millions have 
been spent on building a navy, the people will want 
to see some return for their money." 

"Quite so ; if you were talking about our own 
people, Padre, you would be perfectly correct ; 
but Germany isn't England. There is no such 
thing as public opinion there, or, if there is, it 
counts for nothing at all ; the Kaiser's opinion is 
the only one that carries any weight." 

" Well, and will not the Kaiser's amour propre 
oblige him to send his Fleet out ? After all his 
posturing as the ' Admiral of the Atlantic,' how 

100 



The Curtain in Place 



could he possibly endure the chagrin of yielding 
the trident to Britain without attempting to put 
up a fight for it ? Besides, the German sailors 
themselves will clamour to be allowed to prove 
their mettle." 

" Possibly. They will have to do as they are 
told, however. And even the Kaiser's personal 
wishes must give way to the higher dictates of 
policy." 

" But my argument is that Germany's best 
policy is to force a Fleet action. If she should lose 
the whole of her Fleet in battle she would be no 
worse off than she is now with the whole of it de- 
mobilised. On the other hand, if she should chance 
to win a big naval action — and you never can tell, 
some extraordinary luck might favour her — why, 
then she would make what terms she pleased with 
her enemies, and with England in particular. And 
why not take such a chance ? She would only be 
gambling with counters ; because her ships are 
nearly all of a type that is rapidly becoming obsolete, 
and in a very few years' time they will be hope- 
lessly outclassed. I say that Germany has every- 
thing to gain and nothing to lose by forcing a Fleet 
action." 

At this point several of the other officers began 
to gather round to listen to the discussion. " Well 
done, Padre," was the tone of the general remarks. 
" Hot stuff at speechifying, isn't he ? " " Have a 
spot, Bishop, you deserve it after that, and I only 
wish your remarks could get to the ears of the 

101 



The Curtain of Steel 



Germans and persuade 'em to emerge from the Kiel 
Canal." "Now then, Wet 'Un, you to play."/ 
44 Yes. Madden, forward, please ! " " Silence now, 
and let's hear the words of wisdom from the One- 
and-only ! " 

Madden did not condescend to take the least 
notice of this vulgar badinage, and as soon as there 
was a pause in the hum of voices he began : 

"It is a pity, Padre, that you should allow 
yourself to be such a superficial thinker. A little 
reflection would show you that the exact opposite 
of your statement is correct — the Germans have 
everything to lose and nothing to gain by coming 
out — — " 



(" Go it, Wet 'Un ! Have at him ! Good dog, 
worry him \ ") 

44 Remaining where they are, they hold the Russian 
Baltic Fleet in check ; point one. Point two, so 
long as the High Seas Fleet remains 4 a fleet in 
being ' it is a tremendous latent power ; it obliges 
us to keep the whole of our Navy on a war footing, 
with a great portion of our merchant shipping 
withdrawn from its proper use to wait on the Fleet's 
needs, and several hundred thousand men employed 
in the ships and dockyards who might otherwise 
be made use of as soldiers ; and, at the end of the 
war, if the Germain Fleet is still intact, it will be a 
great factor in the peace negotiations. Point 
three, by refusing to come out Germany exercises 
a tremendous pull over the neutrals, as she can bluff 
them that we are the ones who will not fight ; she 

102 



The Curtain in Place 



can pretend that we, with all our big Fleet, are 
abject cowards and the neutrals probably see no 
reason why they shouldn't believe Germany as much 
as us. Whereas, if she were to lose her Fleet in a 
fight — and she almost certainly would lose it — the 
gaff would be blown, and the hesitating neutral 
nations would be all up against Germany. Depend 
upon it, the High Seas Fleet won't face us, — not 
intentionally." 

Here the audience began to chip in with argu- 
ments and side issues of their own, and the pro- 
tagonists seized the opportunity to moisten their 
exhausted tongues with a friendly split. 

But if we did not see the High Seas Fleet we did 
just catch sight of some of the German ships that 
first winter. It was a very brief glimpse indeed, 
because as soon as they sighted us they turned 
and ran for home ; and as they happened to be 
vessels of a faster type than the British squadron 
it was hopeless to think of pursuing them. 

By the way, the German ship which was at the 
tail of the line, and quite safely out of range, gave 
us a parting greeting as she scuttled away by making 
the word " Oxo " by flashlight. Some wag on the 
signal bridge was responsible for it, I suppose. I 
do not know what it meant, but it was no doubt 
intended to be insulting, much as when a rude 
little boy puts his fingers to his nose on running 
away from a policeman. 

Unfortunately, we were not at all offended, but 
laughed heartily. We were pleased to see some- 

103 



The Curtain of Steel 



thing that appeared to indicate the Dawn of Humour 
in the German Nation. 

And so that long first winter wore on. After the 
autumnal equinox the days began to shorten very 
rapidly, until there were only about six hours of 
daylight in the twenty-four. The gales increased, 
and there was very seldom any possibility of getting 
ashore. The season was more than usually cold 
all over the kingdom, and the sailors had not at 
that time the generous amount of extra warm 
clothing which was afterwards granted them by 
the Admiralty ; however, gifts of woollies came 
pouring in from private donors, and to some extent 
supplied the deficiency. 

Yet scarcely a grumble was ever heard ; officers 
and men alike were contented and jolly, and managed 
to find all sorts of amusements with which to pass 
the long dark evenings. 

So dawned the first Christmas of the war — the 
day by which so many of the trusting matloes had 
prophesied that the war would be all over ! 

It found the Fleet steaming down the North Sea, 
with the crews at Action Stations, on one of the 
periodical sweeps towards Heligoland ! 



104 



III. The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



/ 



III. The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



THE first leave, like the first anything, had 
a peculiar quality attached to it that 
marked it out from all subsequent leaves. 

The ship was in dry dock, undergoing a refit ; 
this is what made leave-giving possible, for so long 
as a ship is able to keep the seas she must be main- 
tained in all respects as a fighting unit, with officers 
and men on board. But when the vessel is in dock 
her crew is for the time being of as little use to her 
as his clothes to a man when he goes to bed. 

This elegant simile is perhaps a little spoiled by 
the fact that a certain number of both men and 
officers have of course to remain on board during 
the refit to carry on such work as can never be 
left undone. 

I saw a picture the other day of a battleship in 
dock, done by a great artist. The dock in the 

H 107 



The Curtain of Steel 



picture was a floating-dock, and the dark mass 
stood out in the middle distance against a glowing 
sunset which cast bright patches of light upon the 
water. The outlines of both ship and dock were 
blurred and undefined — whether for the sake of 
artistic effect or with the object of placating the 
censor at the Admiralty Press Bureau I cannot 
say ; but the result was certainly most effective, 
a beautiful and inspiring tone-poem. 

But the real thing doesn't strike one as very 
poetic, when one has to live on board the ship 
under these conditions. 

In the first place, even the best of dry docks is 
—not to put too fine a point upon it — smelly. 
Seven or eight different smells are always clamouring 
for precedence, and any one of them would be 
sufficient of itself to fit out the native quarter of 
an Eastern city with the necessary aroma. One of 
the least unpleasant is that which emanates from 
the anti-fouling composition with which the ship's 
bottom, after being scraped, is now re-coated ; 
this has a pungent scent which rather resembles 
burning indiarubber mingled with ether fumes ; 
and in its dire effects it is not unlike some whisky 
we had in a former ship of mine, where a dishonest 
wine-steward abstracted about half the spirit and 
filled up the cask with sea- water. 

The artist's presentment of a ship in dock left 
out also another of the main features of the situa- 
tion, namely, the noise. 

Of the day-time noises I say nothing, except that 

108 



The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



every single brand of craftsman that can possibly 
have anything to do with the repairing of a ship 
and its contents is plying his trade and his tools 
all the time ; and these tools are not of the quiet 
old-fashioned type, worked by hand and only now 
and then emitting their sounds of tapping or scrap- 
ing, but tools such as the hurry of modern times 
has made necessary, driven by steam, gas, com- 
pressed-air, hydraulics, and electricity, all of them 
deafening and nerve-racking,' and all of them 
working simultaneously at full power. 

Day-time noises, however, do not form a legitimate 
object for a grumble, as they are in the most literal 
sense " all in the day's work " ; but what can be 
said for the fiend in human shape who breaks the 
brief peace of the stilly night by suddenly dealing 
about a dozen clanging blows with a heavy hammer 
on some unoffending piece of metal, and then as 
suddenly ceasing ? He really does exist, this sleep- 
dispelling ghoul : I have heard him ; but why he 
exists is a problem as hard to solve as that of the 
usefulness of the mosquito ! 

Then we have also to contend with the fact that, 
when in dock, the electric lighting of the ship is 
supplied from the dock itself, which means that 
every now and then the lights go out, when they 
are changing circuits or swapping dynamos or 
something of that sort, and the ship is suddenly 
plunged into total darkness. This always happens 
at most inopportune moments. 

As, for example, when I tvas picking my way along 

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The Curtain of Steel 



the half-deck, a place once as bright and glittering 
as the palace-scene in a pantomime, but now like 
the back shop of a marine store dealer ; advancing 
towards me from the opposite direction, and negoti- 
ating the obstacles like a hen in silk stockings 
crossing a muddy road, appeared our little Padre. 
I suppose I looked just as funny as he did, but I 
saw him and he didn't see me, so I laughed. And 
then the lights went out suddenly. There was an 
exclamation. 

" Padre," I said rebukingly, " I believe I heard 
you say a bad word ! " 

" And so would you," the unrepentant little 
cleric retaliated, " if you had barked your shins 
against the sharp edge of a confounded wash-deck 
locker like I've just done. And how I'm going to 
get out of this Hampton Court Maze which the 
mateys have been amusing themselves by erecting 
here is more than I can tell." 

" Stay where you are," I said, "and I'll come 
over and give you a hand." 

And then my foot caught in a length of iron 
piping, and over I went. 

"Well, anyhow," remarked the callous little 
brute of a parson — and I could feel him grinning 
in the darkness — " the bad word you said was a 
badder word than the bad word I said ! " 

And then the lights came on again. The " Dock- 
yard Mateys " were responsible for a good deal 
more than incidents of the above nature ; they 
and their work gave rise to much comment, some- 

110 



The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



times complimentary and sometimes very much 
the reverse. 

There was a time^ — it seems long years ago now 
— when a dockyard refit used to extend over a 
comfortably long period, sometimes running well 
into three months. I do not say that everyone 
took things very leisurely, because there appeared 
to be quite a lot of bustling in evidence ; but it 
never occurred to anyone that there was a case 
for " speeding-up." The normal allowance of time 
for a refit was then six weeks, but it was a very 
elastic period and the stretching process generally 
took place. 

Then came a time when an order was issued to 
the effect that no refit was to take longer than one 
month. One month ! We stood aghast at such 
an unheard of order, and everyone said the thing 
was impossible, absurd ! 

But now — why, fancy being able to jog along 
sleepily for a whole month over a refit ! 

In the few days that were allotted to us the 
mateys certainly got through a power of work. 
They seemed to be slow enough in doing it, and at 
the end of each day there was not a great deal to 
show for the day's work ; but when it was all over 
and the ship cleared up and ready for sea, one could 
look scarcely anywhere without finding some trans- 
formation that had been worked above decks or 
below. 

So there must have been a good deal of real 
honest work put in. Unfortunately, not all the 

111 



The Curtain of Steel 



workers followed the example of the majority. 
You might think that in a time of great national 
need every single man would lay himself out to do 
his utmost and a bit more to help the country ; 
especially when engaged on such a job as this, 
remembering that a ship refitting is a ship lost to 
the Fleet for the time being, and that consequently 
the Curtain of Steel is just that much less strong 
until the ship can go to sea again. 

But — well, here is an actual incident of the refit. 
Time, during a stand-easy, and just before the 
sounding of the Buzzer signal when work has to 
start again. 

The silence is disturbed by a sound of hammering 
somewhere below, and, immediately after, the 
following conversation is overheard. 

First Workman (indignantly addressing his mate 
who was hammering) : " 'Ere, knock off ! Buzzer 
'asn't gone yet ! " 
The hammering at once ceases. 
Second Workman : " Oh, 'asn't it ? My mate 
said it 'ad ! " 

Work not resumed until the sounding of the 
Buzzer. 

Now, the marvel to my mind is that the decent 
working-men, who are in a large majority, don't 
deal with creatures of this sort on their own and 
quietly drop them over the side or something of 
that sort. Because it is just these miserable, work- 
shy loafers who are answerable for all the distrust 
and ill-feeling between 'the "classes" and the 

112 



The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



" masses." These individuals spoil the game for 
the good men ; they cast a stigma upon labour 
and trades-unionism, and bring the name of work- 
men into contempt. The employer is not altogether 
to be blamed if he believes the rot to have spread 
further than perhaps it really has ; he is bound, by 
the nature of things, either to trust his men or to 
suspect them, and if these " wait-for-the-buzzer " 
gentry make themselves prominent, it is hardly to 
be wondered at if the employer decides to be on the 
safe side, and treat all his men with suspicion. 

The working man has many enemies, but the 
deadliest of them all is the working-man who won't 
work. 

It is a poignant contrast, when the officer who 
has charge of that part of the ship where the men 
are " waiting for the buzzer," paid about half as 
much as they are, and risking his life every time 
he goes to sea, sweats through the long day and 
well into the night hours, with no idea of praise 
or reward, but simply to help on the efficiency of 
the ship in that little department where he happens 
to find himself placed. 

As touching the question of the matey's pay, 
however, the remark of another workman probably 
represents the opinions of the sound majority. 
' Here am I drawing my eight quid a week, and 
my brother in the trenches is getting a bob a day ; 
it seems all wrong, but what am I to do ? I should 
be x a fool to refuse the money when it is offered to 
me ! The mistake lay in not keeping down the 

113 



The Curtain of Steel 



wages from the start ; prices would have kept 
down too then, and there wouldn't have been all 
this outcry." 

Which seems a perfectly just summing up of the 
situation. 



The greater part of the ship's company knew 
nothing of the joys of refitting. On the day the 
ship went into dock, the men were mustered on 
the upper deck, and each one was given a railway 
pass together with a carefully drawn up paper of 
information concerning times of arrival at various 
stations and connections necessary to take them 
to their homes. 

They were a merry crowd. After these months 
in the North Sea the prospect of seeing Home 
again was quite enough to make them forget all 
their troubles. 

Goodness only knows where they had got their 
travelling cases and boxes from, or in what part of 
the ship these had been stowed in readiness, but 
every man had a package of some sort. A very 
favourite form was the Japanese basket with a 
strap around its middle ; all sailors appear to love 
this arrangement, though it looks a decidedly 
awkward thing to handle. Others were possessed 
of portmanteaus and suit-cases which mostly had 
the appearance of having once belonged to the 
officers, discarded by the original owners probably 
at a time when the luxury of a nice new shiny bag 

114 



The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



was irresistible, and now furbished up and made to 
do duty again in a humbler walk of life. 

Many and varied were the plans made by the 
sailors for the forthcoming leave ; " How am I 
going to spend it ? " observed one of them — " why 
I am going to stop in bed the whole time, and eat 
till I can't see ! " — a programme which certainly 
promised enjoyment of a sort ; of a different sort 
from that indulged in by another man who after- 
wards wrote home to his friends, " Would you 
mind telling me what I did when I was home on 
leave ? " He must have spent several hours of 
glorious life ! 



When it was all over, and we had returned once 
more to take up again the routine of ship life with 
a prospect of a good many months of it ahead of 
us before another turn of leave, we beguiled our- 
selves with comparing notes. 

The young surgeon had spent five nights in town, 
and on four of these had been to see " To-Night' s 
the Night " ; and his artistic soul had been so 
satisfied with that musical banquet that with a 
view to further feasting on it he brought back with 
him gramophone records of every single air. These 
he insisted on playing on every opportunity ; 
sitting down caressingly by the side of the torture- 
box and faithfully rendering every record in his 
outfit, until we began to wish that he had spent 
his leave in the wilds of the country ! 

115 



The Curtain of Steel 



Madden also had been in London. But he came 
back gloomy and depressed, and did not appear 
to have enjoyed himself at all. 

" Didn't you see anything worth looking at ? '* 
we asked him. 

"Well, one day I very nearly saw a street acci- 
dent." 

" Very nearly saw one ? What do you mean ? " 

" Just exactly that. I was on top of a 'bus, and 
away on our starboard quarter there came dashing 
along a butcher's cart, not under control, yawing 
about heavily. The man had dropped the reins 
and was yelling out like anything, frightened out of 
his wits. Just as it was coming up alongside the 
horse suddenly turned eight points and bolted up 
a side street, so we couldn't see what happened, but 
we heard a terrific crash ! Our conductor pulled 
up the 'bus and ran back to see the show. In a 
rninute or two he came back looking as sick as a 
dog, and reported " Man not 'urt. 'Orse not 'urt. 
Cart not 'urt. Nothink ! ' He was fairly disgusted, 
and so were we all. And that's the most thrilling 
thing I saw in town ! " 

Another officer had spent his leave at the front 
in France, where the fighting had already by this 
time settled down into the form of trench warfare 
in which it was to continue for three long years. 
This member of our mess was quite a hero to us, 
as the fashion of visiting the front had not yet fully 
set in, and he had to pull several important strings 
before obtaining permission to cross the Channel. 

116 



The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



But beyond the fact that he had been treated as a 
Distinguished Visitor, and had witnessed with his 
own eyes the magnificent cheeriness of our own 
men, we didn't get many yarns out of him. 

In fact the best yarns were not, strictly speaking, 
leave-stories at all, but culled from pals who had 
drifted home from various parts of the world, on 
furlough or invalided. It is astonishing how many 
such old acquaintances of this sort one knocks up 
against in London — but, now I come to think of 
it, this remark has probably been made before. 

There was a story that came all the way from 
Mesopotamia. It concerned an Arab Sheik, one 
of a tribe friendly to us. This son of the desert 
had begged to be taken up in an aeroplane — a pro- 
ceeding which argued an extraordinary amount of 
courage, both physical and moral, if you remember 
that the unsophisticated dwellers in the wilderness 
believe an aeroplane to be driven by Djinns who 
may at any moment rebel against the magician in 
the pilot's seat. But the Sheik was given his joy- 
ride, and all the rest of the tribe stood and watched 
with amazement and awe. Presently a cloud con- 
cealed the machine from sight ; and a loud wailing 
arose from the assembled tribesmen, who believed 
that their chief had been snatched away by the 
evil spirits of the air. However, the aeroplane 
reappeared presently and after a while descended 
in safety. The Sheik stepped out, greatly elated, 
and explained to his friends : 

" Ye saw when the clouds came down from 

U7 



The Curtain of Steel 



heaven and swallowed us up ? How long, think ye, 
was I hid from your eyes ? " 

" It was but while a man might count a hundred, 
lord." 

"So it may have seemed to you. But know ye 
that in that time we flew to the city of Stamboul, 
and saw the Caliph, the Father of the Faithful. 
He is a slight-built man with a black beard." 

46 Allah is great ! The Caliph is even as thou 
describest ! " 

■ ■ And, after that, we soared upwards and up- 
wards, like an eagle that rises till he becomes as a 
black speck in the heavens, till we reached the sun." 

" Bismillah ! But, lord, how wast thou not 
burnt ? " 

" Was not the cloud with us ? That quenched 
the heat, so we felt it no more than the mild warmth 
of Springtime. I will tell you of the wonders I saw 
there another time. But that was nothing ; after 
this we went on further upward still, and visited 
Heaven itself." 

" And what sawest thou there ? " 

"It is not permitted to tell ! But if my lips 
were unsealed I could ravish your ears for a life- 
time with the tale of the glories revealed to me. 
Mahomet himself, with thousands of the faithful 
attending on him ! And the houris — Ah ! " 

From that moment the Sheik was believed in and 
obeyed as if he had been a being from another sphere ; 
and if the British needed any task performed which 
was uncongenial to the native mind, all they had 

118 



The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



to do was to send for this particular Sheik, who 
would set his tribe to do the work without the 
slightest trouble. 

Shorter but rather more pungent was the story 
retailed by a submarine officer just home from the 
Mediterranean. One of his messmates was a man 
who took great pride in his personal appearance and 
was especially particular about his linen, which he 
would not entrust to the local washerwomen but 
sent all the way home to a steam laundry in Ports- 
mouth. On one or two occasions, however, the 
linen was returned in a very unsatisfactory condi- 
tion, which made the Lieutenant so irate that he 
took pen in hand and sat him down to write a 
scathing rebuke, pointing out the enormity of the 
crime with all the virulence and vehemence at his 
command. Then he awaited the reply. In due 
course it came, and he opened it to read with satis- 
faction the expected apology. 

It read : " Yours of the 17th ulto. to hand. 
Composition good, Spelling bad." 

4 

But the greatest event of the leave was the Oaf's 
engagement. 

We did not find it, out for some little time, and 
then only by the fact that every mail brought 
Meredyth a letter in the same feminine handwriting. 

You must understand that naval officers are never 
in the least degree reticent about the private affairs 

119 



The Curtain of Steel 



of their messmates, and not at all backward in 
putting leading questions to extract information 
if they feel curious. 

" What's the meaning of this, Oaf ? Here you 
are, getting a letter every mail from some fair 
young thing ! Do you mean to say you have been 
and gone and got engaged ? You ? " 

The blush upon Meredyth's open face too readily 
betrayed the truth. 

" Well, I didn't mean to," he apologised ; and 
this remark not unnaturally increased the volume 
of chaff to which he was subjected. 

" As a nice point of naval etiquette," thoughtfully 
observed the Captain of Marines, "it is a delicate 
question whether we ought to celebrate the occa- 
sion by putting up spots to the Oaf, or whether he 
should put them up to us." 

" I'm blest if I'm going to stand drinks to a 
thirsty mob like you," said the Oaf, " so don't you 
think it ! " 

" No need for you to chip in with your opinion," 
calmly continued Hotham ; " the matter is too 
subtle for your understanding. What do you think 
about it, Paymaster ? You've been a long time 
in the Service and should know the traditions." 

The Paymaster, thus consulted, appeared to 
cogitate deeply, and in a few moments pronounced 
judgment — " I think that as the Oaf is in a minority 
of one, the wishes of the majority ought to prevail. 
He will therefore be our host. And, as a pretty 
compliment to him, we will afterwards invite him 

120 



The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



to have two-pennor'th of whatever he likes at our 
expense." 

" Oh, all right," grumbled Meredyth — who was 
really as pleased as he could be — " Wine Steward, 
bring out some of the Number One Champagne ! " 

Not many members of the mess knew who was 
the lady of his choice. Curiosity and questioning 
stopped short of such intimate details, as is always 
the case. But the little Padre and myself were quite 
sure in our own minds that the lady was that very 
nice Marjorie Daw. And as we knew them both 
so well, we tackled the Oaf on the subject when we 
were alone together. 

He admitted the fact at once with a cheery smile 
and more blushing. 

"Well," said the Padre, "there's one thing 
about it, you've chosen a very pretty girl." 

" Oh, d'you think so ? I don't think she's at 
all pretty." 

This was rather disconcerting. Especially as 
Marjorie was undoubtedly very pretty. However, 
every eye forms its own beauty, and so I suppose 
forms also its own lack of that quality. I reflected 
that Meredyth was therefore to be commended on 
having based his choice on something more valuable 
and lasting than mere outward beauty, and I tact- 
fully broke a rather awkward silence by observing : 

" At any rate, she has a very sweet disposition ! " 

;c Hm ! You don't know what a temper that 
girl's got ! " said the Oaf. 

This was worse still. The Padre and I looked at 



121 



The Curtain of Steel 



each other, not knowing quite what to say next. 
But the situation was too much for the impetuous 
cleric, who turned upon Meredyth and blurted out 
what was in the minds of both of us : 

" Then why the dickens did you get engaged to 
her ? " 

"Oh, I dunno," beamed the Oaf. "I had no 
intention of doing anything of the sort. We were 
out for a walk together, and, well, somehow I just 
couldn't help it, that's all." After a moment's 
pause he added lamely : "I don't know anybody 
that can beat her at spinning for mackerel." 

We let it go at that, and did not attempt any 
further interrogations. But I think we under- 
stood, both of us, that the real reason of Meredyth's 
falling in love was — simply that he had fallen in 
love. And that is the best of all possible reasons. 



Trythall did not return to the ship. He was 
appointed to a destroyer, in command, while he 
was on his leave, and had to hurry off to the port 
where she was to be commissioned. 

Needless to say, he was overjoyed at his new 
appointment. " I am sorry enough at having to 
leave the old hooker and all you fellows," he wrote 
to me, " but there's nothing like having a ship of 
your own and running your own show. Let alone 
the fact that there's a good deal more chance of 

122 



The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



seeing life in a destroyer than ever there is likely 
to be in a jolly old battleship." 

I wonder what Myra thought about it. 

At the end of the letter there was an invitation 
to me to break my journey at the port where he 
was fitting out his new ship when I took my leave ; 
and though he had overlooked the fact that this 
would take me about three hundred miles out of 
my way I nevertheless decided to put up with the 
longer journey in order to see him in all the glory 
of his new command. 

I found the Windsor Castle in that state of 
apparent chaos which is always seen in a ship just 
taken over from the contractor and about to be 
fully commissioned. To a casual glance it looked 
as though about half the ship's fittings were still 
to be built in, and likewise as if a large portion of 
the builder's yard had been dumped down on the 
decks and forgotten ; and a shoregoer would prob- 
ably have felt that he was being too sanguine in 
predicting that the ship might possibly be ready 
for sea in another three months. 

4 Saturday week we shove off out of this and 
join the Fleet," Trythall said. We're going to be 
up with you, you know, so I shall be able to visit 
the old junk now and then. But come and have a 
look round, and tell me what you think of her." 

The Windsor Castle was one of the very latest 
type of destroyers. Compared to the old " thirty- 
knotters " of years ago she was almost palatial. 
The captain's cabin was quite a roomy apartment, 

T 123 



The Curtain of Steel 



and even when the curtain was drawn over in front 
of the neat little brass-railed bunk there was space 
enough left to pull up a couple of comfortable arm- 
chairs in front of the tiny anthracite stove, the 
brass funnel of which was shining like gold ; evi- 
dently Trythall had secured a good steward and 
had set him to work. 

Other hands had been at work also ; over the 
scuttle and across the doors and the bunk-space 
were pretty cretonne curtains, which had all been 
sewn, so Trythall told me, by his " Missus," who 
had chosen the pattern herself. And there was a 
new bunk-spread, also her handiwork, of navy blue 
cloth, embroidered in gold with his name and the 
list of ships in which he had served, beginning with 
the Britannia and ending with the Windsor Castle* 
There were photographs also of his wife and " Miss 
Trythall," lots of them, scattered about in various 
places ; and, altogether, it was a very cosy-looking 
cabin. 

But it was, of course, the upper deck with the 
guns and the torpedo-tubes which absorbed all the 
enthusiasm of the Windsor Castle's captain. 

I learnt also that he himself was travelling south 
that night, on six days' leave, as it appeared that 
his presence on board was not essential. Lucky chap ! 

He suggested that we should travel down to- 
gether, and that I should spend a forenoon with 
him at his house before going on to my own home. 
So the next morning we found ourselves at his 
pretty little place off the Dorchester Road. 

124 



The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



" Billy's as proud as a cat with two tails," Mrs. 
Trythall informed me as soon as we had settled 
down comfortably in front of a cheerful fire ; it 
was too chilly at that time of the year to sit out 
in the pleasant garden, though we could look out 
of the big French windows and see the beech tree 
beneath which shade we had lazily stretched our- 
selves that summer afternoon — years and years ago, 
it seemed now. And as I cast a glance out upon 
the garden there came flying down and settling on 
the grass a disconsolate-looking thrush — I wondered 
whether it were the identical songster that Marjorie 
Daw had regaled with pieces of cake at our Sunday 
afternoon tea-party ; but he was silent now and 
a-cold, feeling the hard grip of the winter. 

" Yes," continued Myra, " there's no holding 
Billy now that he's got a destroyer " 

" Shall I tell you why ? " interrupted Trythall 
with a merry grin. " It's because I've never been 
my own boss before. In a battleship I'm a mere 
dogsbody — and when I come home here I'm a good 
deal less than that, a poor downtrodden worm ! 
Now, for the first time in my life I shall have nobody 
to order me about ! Once aboard the lugger — Oh, 
I say, Myra, that's a dirty low game, buzzing 
cushions at me from behind my back ! " 

I could see that she was playing up to old Trythall's 
high content of himself with all her power. But 
when she was not smiling her mouth in repose 
had a strained wistful droop at the corners which 
ordinarily was not seen there. A thought was 

125 



The Curtain of Steel 



troubling her which after a while could not be kept 
in restraint, though the words were forced into a 
casual tone, as if the question were really hardly 
worth asking : "I suppose a destroyer is really 
quite a safe vessel to be in ? " 

She looked towards me in speaking ; but her 
husband hurriedly forestalled my answer. 

"Safe?" -he echoed, "why there's nothing to 
touch a destroyer for safety ! As far as danger 
goes I consider that I am practically out of the 
war from this time on. I wouldn't go back to a 
battleship for anything you could offer me — I value 
my life too much ! The big ships may bump into 
a mine at any minute, while we in our destroyers 
glide gracefully over the minefield, thanks to our 
shallow draught." 

" But the gales ? Destroyers look such flimsy 
little things ! " 

Trythall sent a rapid glance in my direction, as 
if to tell me that it was up to me to tell the next 
lot of lies. And I would cheerfully have lied till 
all was blue in such a good cause, but fortunately 
there was little need for me to draw upon my 
imagination. 

" You would be astonished," I said, " to see 
what an amount of weather destroyers can stand, 
not only with perfect safety but with comparative 
comfort. They are so well built, you see, and 
specially designed to cope with heavy seas ; and, 
really, they often stand the weather a good deal 
better than the big ships." 

126 



The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



All this was perfectly true. But Trythall appeared 
to expect a better effort from me than this ; so I 
went on : 

" Your husband is quite correct, Mrs. Trythall, 
when he says that he is just as safe now as if he 
were ashore ; in fact, he is a good deal safer, when 
you think of all the accidents that can happen in 
the course of an ordinary walk or tram-ride. Don't 
you worry about that." 

" I suppose you're right ; I hope you are," she 
replied. "I know it's silly of me to imagine such 
things." 

"Silly? I should jolly well think it was," 
laughed Trythall, " so put all those ideas out of 
your head at once, little woman." 

" Where's Miss Trythall ? " I enquired, with an 
effort to change the topic ; "I should like to see 
her before I go, and I'll have to be hopping it 
presently." 

' She is somewhere about the place, I believe. 
Perhaps I had better go and look for her, or else 
there ? s no telling what time she may appear. She 
went out for a walk with her Nannie this morning, 
and I don't know whether they are back yet or 
not." 

As soon as she was outside the door Trythall 
turned to me and xlrew a folded newspaper out 
from his coat pocket, thrusting it into my 
hands. 

" Stow it away in one of your pockets for God's 
sake, old man," he said in a quick voice ; " keep 



127 



The Curtain of Steel 



it out of sight, and don't let on that you've got 
it ! " 

" But why ? " 

" I always go into the village and get one every 
morning. If the Missus asks for it I'll tell her 
there were none to be had to-day, or any ruddy lie 
I can think of. Button that one well up inside 
your coat, and take care the end of it doesn't stick 
out." 

Not understanding, but willing to oblige, I 
opened the paper in order to fold it into a smaller 
compass to fit my pocket. And as the open page 
appeared I read the headline in big letters : 

" One of H.M. Destroyers lost with all hands." 

" That's all right, old man," I said with a com- 
prehending nod ; " she shan't know anything about 
it if / can help it." 

6 

Back again with the Fleet, and the leave already 
becoming a dim vision of the past. 

We soon felt as if we had never been away from 
it at all, and. quickly fell into the old routine again. 

More cruising, more sweeping the North Sea — 
and more coaling ! 

Plenty of drills and exercises too, and practice 
firing of all sorts, from full-charge ■ big stuff ' 
down to one-inch sub-calibre, more commonly 
described as " piff." 

There was an occasion when the enemy thought 
they had discovered one of our haunts ; and no 

128 



The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



doubt they would not be long before laying an 
extensive minefield in the vicinity — a work which 
those painstaking and very thorough gentry must 
have spent a considerable amount of time and 
labour in accomplishing, without the slightest 
return for their trouble ! 

They were enabled to undertake minelaying 
operations of this nature by reason of the develop- 
ment of their submarine mine-droppers, which 
began to make their appearance about this time. 
At the commencement of the war there were none 
of these specialised craft in existence ; and credit 
is due to the foresight and hustle of the German 
Admiralty, which gave full scope to its naval in- 
ventors and builders as soon as ever it was seen 
that the surface-craft were bound to be driven 
off the face of the seas ; so that by the time these 
had been cleared off — in spite of every imaginable 
trickery and disguise as peaceful neutral merchant- 
men — the submarine minelayers were ready to take 
their place. 

The capture of one of these diabolical vessels and 
its triumphant exhibition in the Thames brought 
home to the minds of the general public the actual 
fact of their existence ; but it may be doubted 
whether anyone outside the Navy understood even 
.then what an enormously difficult task it is to deal 
effectively with this unseen danger. A surface 
minelayer can be detected, and the area in which 
she is seen can then be swept ; but when the hidden 
enemy can come in safety and mine any spot in 

129 



The Curtain of Steel 



the hundreds of miles of shallow water which 
surround the coasts of Britain, the task of dis- 
covering the danger-areas is one that may well 
seem almost beyond human powers. Yet it has 
been dealt with, and very effectually ; and this 
enormous undertaking, little appreciated by the 
general public, is by no means the least part of 
what the Navy has done and is doing. 

Mines can only be laid in shallow water. In the 
open sea there was another danger to be reckoned 
with in the shape of floating mines, which the 
Germans scattered plentifully — or got other people 
to do the (jlirty work for them — in complete dis- 
regard df the Hague Convention which laid down 
that any such mines must be so constructed as to 
become harmless after a few hours. Germany 
signed this and many similar agreements with her 
tongue in her cheek, knowing that other nations 
would be foolish enough to keep their pledged word 
while she could reap a " military advantage " by 
breaking it ; what did a scratch of the pen matter ? 

And what did it matter, either, if these same 
floating mines should cause the destruction of 
harmless merchantmen, neutrals as well as British ? 
No German ship would be endangered — because no 
German ships were at sea — and it was of little 
consequence what happened to the ships and people 
of other nations. 

It is but fair to add that the mines which strewed 
the waters of the North Sea, were not all of them 
deliberately placed there. Every heavy storm 

130 



/ 



The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



always plays a certain amount of havoc amongst the 
most carefully laid minefield, the mines ^of which 
break from their moorings, at least some of them do, 
and drift away to the beach or to the open sea as the 
winds and currents direct them. And such storms 
work quite impartially on British minefields as well 
as on those of the enemy. 

But whether scattered of malice aforethought or 
drifting by chance, the floating mines were un- 
doubtedly a source of some danger to the Fleet at 
sea, and called for a constant and careful look-out. 

So you will understand the feelings of one of our 
watchkeepers, who said with disgust at the close of 
one of our frequent and fruitless cruises, " Well, the 
war has been going on for a good many months now, 
and so far I've only seen one German — and he was a 
floating-mine ! " 



Besides floating mines, the menace of submarines 
had to be taken into account whenever we put to sea. 

I cannot honestly say that we worried very much 
about them. On the whole, I think they were far 
more afraid of meeting us than we were of meeting 
them. And really I don't blame them ; for it 
must be pretty alarming to any unfortunate U-boat 
to see a mighty fleet come sweeping towards it at 
high speed, spreading for miles on either side, with 
hosts of destroyers and light cruisers in attendance ; 
and to know that in every single one of all these 

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The Curtain of Steel 



hundreds of ships there are eyes searching the face 
of the waters for the smallest glimpse of a periscope 
showing itself, and guns by the hundred ready to 
loose off at a moment's notice. Small blame, I say, 
to the U-boats if on such occasions they preferred to 
make themselves scarce. 

We did meet them, several times, and more than 
once steamed right through them. But although 
we took the needful precautions and treated the 
danger as a very real one there did not appear to be 
much cause for us to put ourselves to any great 
trouble ; the " gallant U-boat commanders " were 
on the look-out for something nice and easy, an 
unarmed tramp or a fishing boat, and were not at all 
keen on standing up to ships that could retaliate. 
They probably heaved a sigh of great relief when 
the Fleet had passed and left them unhurt. Then 
they were free to go back to the Fatherland and spin 
what yarns they liked ; for at this time we had not 
thoroughly learnt the art of submarine-hunting, 
and although some of them were put down the 
greater number were still able to go about their evil 
work with comparative impunity. 

8 

This comparative impunity, however, was already 
lessening week by week, almost day by day, as we 
devised new and effectual methods of dealing with 
U-boats. When I say "we," I mean that sub- 
sidiary navy which did not loom so big in the public 

132 



The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



eye as the Grand Fleet, but was equally important 
in its own particular sphere ; those trawlers, 
drifters, yachts, motor-launches and patrol craft 
of all types, manned by the most varied personnel 
from the smart destroyer officer to the rough 
North Sea fisherman who felt mighty uncomfortable 
in the navy rig with which he had been kitted up. 

The story of this lesser navy has been partly 
written since those days, and when it is told in its 
full completeness it will be indeed a thrilling story, 
crammed with the adventures and the brave deeds 
of the men who faced death and danger in their 
fight with the U-boats — if they can ever be induced 
to speak about such things ; for they are a silent, 
dour crowd, most of them. 

But it was not always left to these hardy little 
craft to reckon with the German submarines. There 
was at least one occasion of which I was a personal 
witness when a battleship encountered a U-boat ; 
the battleship continued its voyage unscathed after 
the encounter, but the U-boat never returned to 
Germany ! 

We were, at the time, steaming in fleet formation 
down the North Sea. I know I have mentioned a 
similar fact a good many times already, and the 
reader will probably get rather tired of the repeti- 
tion ; but then, we did occupy ourselves after this 
fashion so very frequently, so I am not to blame if 
the record becomes a trifle monotonous ; it cannot 
be so monotonous as the actual cruises were to us 
who took part in them, since they were a constant 

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source of great expectations followed by dull dis- 
appointment. 

This time it was different. Something really did 
happen ! 

Three German submarines suddenly appeared all 
at once just ahead of the Fleet and directly in our 
path. 

In all probability they were returning to Germany 
after a cruise of two or three weeks in British waters 
where they had been harrying the merchant- 
shipping. It was their usual custom to make certain 
points on our coast and thence take a bearing to 
start them on their Eastward voyage across the 
North Sea. These three boats had taken their 
departure, and probably expected nothing so little 
as a meeting with the Grand Fleet when they were 
well on their homeward voyage. 

One of them dived immediately, evidently think- 
ing discretion the better part of valour, and so got 
safely away, not knowing the fate of the other two 
but presumably hoping to get in company with them 
again later and exchange reports of the proceedings. 

The second one fired a torpedo at one of our 
battleships. Whether the man who fired it singled 
out one particular ship for his special aim or whether 
he just fired into the brown cannot be known ; but 
either way, the shot was unsuccessful. The battle- 
ship which was most nearly approached by the 
torpedo signalled that she had been narrowly missed ; 
and that was all. Perhaps there may have been 
more torpedoes than this one discharged, but if so 

134 



The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



they went so wide of the mark that they were never 
even reported. 

Then this second submarine also dived, and got 
away without venturing a further attack. 

The third submarine was not so fortunate. Before 
it had time to dive the Fleet was almost on top of it. 

The nearest battleship saw the chance, and took 
it. The U-boat made every endeavour to escape, 
but the battleship was on its track. There was but 
one faint hope for the luckless submarine, to zig-zag 
rapidly and thus throw the pursuer off its course. 
But this is where the exceeding handiness of our 
biggest ships came in. The mighty battleship, 
turning like a little picket -boat, zig-zagged also, and 
followed the movements of the submarine with ease, 
gaining distance at every turn. It was like nothing 
so much as a greyhound chasing a hare. 

In a few minutes it was all over. The great ship 
caught the unhappy U-boat on her ram, lifted it 
clean out of the water, and broke it, as you would 
break a stick across your knee. The two ends fell 
off this way and that, and slid down into the waves 
to disappear for ever. 

It is perhaps worthy of remark that Germany 
raised an aggrieved outcry over the loss of this 
particular U-boat, accusing some British merchant 
vessel of having destroyed it by " unfair means." 
Yet, of course, the true facts of the case must have 
been perfectly well known to the German Admiralty 
from the reports of the other two submarines which 
succeeded in getting safely home. Just as in their 

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The Curtain of Steel 



shore-fighting, the Germans have invariably her- 
alded their intentions of using some fresh methods 
of atrocity by making some absurd accusation 
against their enemies beforehand. Their murderous 
campaign against merchant vessels soon after 
assumed a more malignant form. 

9 

So many people have written descriptive accounts 
of the Battle of Jutland that I rigorously refrain 
from adding to the number, and only mean to 
indulge in one or two comments on the affair. 

The Jutland Battle was an accident. What was 
the purpose of the German Fleet in cruising in that 
particular direction is known only to the Germans 
themselves. It remains a mystery, and will con- 
tinue to be one until some candid official of the 
German Admiralty pleases to give the solution. 
But one thing at least is absolutely certain : they 
never intended to meet the Grand Fleet. Not only 
did they never intend to, but they never expected 
to and were disagreeably surprised when they found 
that a meeting was at last unavoidable. 

This much is perfectly evident from the way in 
which they used their utmost endeavours to break 
off the action, from the first moment .when they 
discovered that instead of chasing the easy prey of 
an isolated lot of battle-cruisers they had been 
lured along towards the guns of a fleet of battle- 
ships speedily coming to meet them. 

136 



The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



If ever the Germans wanted to fight, then was 
their opportunity. Never again could they reason- 
ably expect to meet us under circumstances so 
favourable to themselves ; three of our battle- 
cruisers had been sunk in the running fight which 
preceded the main encounter, thus tending to 
equalise the balance in a class of vessels, very 
important in a fleet -action, in which the German 
inferiority was more marked than in any other 
type of ship. Besides this, our battle-fleet was 
not on this occasion at its full strength, some im- 
portant units being absent ; and quite early in the 
action the Warspite, one of the most powerful ships 
in the fleet, was disabled and rendered incapable of 
taking any further part in the fighting. 

So that, taking everything into consideration, 
here was a magnificent opportunity, if the Germans 
chose to take it. But, instead, their only aim was 
to break off and avoid fighting ; and this they 
eventually succeeded in doing, aided by luck in the 
weather conditions and the falling dusk, and — let 
it be admitted— by quite skilful manoeuvring ; but 
not before they had been so badly hammered that 
they simply dared not publish their real losses, and 
are afraid or ashamed to do so to this very day. 

The only other comment of the sort I wish to 
make is that Admiral Jellicoe's handling of the 
Fleet on this occasion was a super display of 
masterly seamanship such as probably no one but 
himself could have given. It was the admiration 
of every officer in the Fleet, and, although not 

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The Curtain of Steel 



attended with the full measure of success which it 
deserved, will certainly take foremost place in the 
records of naval history as the classic example of 
the attempt to bring to action an unwilling opponent. 

But I must not poach on the grounds of the naval 
critics and experts who are welcome to spread them- 
selves on these subjects with serious and lengthy 
ponderosity. 

It is more in my line to tell of one particular 
incident in this great Jutland fight ; the story has 
no definite beginning or end, and no plot, but its 
particular merit is that it happens to be true. 

> 

10 

1 will call the ship the Gemsbok, because that 
does not happen to be her name. She was a Light 
Cruiser — and her story does not read a bit like the 
Ballad of the Revenge. " One against fifty-three " 
was all very well in Greville's day, when naval guns 
lobbed out their round iron shot at intervals of 
several minutes ; shot which sometimes hit but 
much more often missed — and even if they did hit 
the chances were that no more damage would be 
done than the splintering of the wooden walls of 
those times. 

But when a modern shell can be relied upon to 
hit a ship three times out of five at a range of several 
miles, and a single projectile that gets home can 
make a light cruiser into a white-hot mass of old 
junk in a fraction of a minute — under these circum- 

138 



The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



stances any attempt at imitating the Revenge act 
is not at all heroic but purely suicidal, and, what 
is more, extremely foolish. 

The Gemsbok had to perform something like this 
act, however ; and more from necessity than from 
choice. 

' We're in for it now," said the Captain on the 
bridge. 

'So I see," said the Commander at his side; 
" what do you intend to do about it ? " 

" Do 1 Why cut and run," said the Captain. 

" Right down through the line ? " said the Com- 
mander. 

4 Where else is there to go ? " said the Captain. 

Such a situation as the Gemsbok found herself in 
you would say, if you were a Naval Expert, was 
one which could only have been conceived in the 
brain of a writer of sea-stories — the kind which are 
given away as school prizes. The correct disposi- 
tion of a fleet in action makes no allowance for 
such an absurdity. The main battle-fleet should 
be here, battle-cruisers there, armoured cruisers, 
lighter craft, and destroyer flotillas in such and 
such prescribed formations and positions ; all 
very precise and regular ; as formal as the State 
Lancers at a Royal Ball, where you would never 
expect one of the high-born ladies to break away 
and execute a pas seul down the lines of the 
dignified spectators ! 

' Blest if I know how we got into this," said the 
Commander. 



K 139 



I ll- J.MW.U 



The Curtain of Steel 



" Blest if J know how we're ever going to get 
out of it," said the Captain ; " how we got here is 
simple enough ; when you have about five hundred 
ships of assorted kinds all playing a game of Catch- 
as-catch-can combined with Here-we-go-round-the- 
mulberry-bush, is it any wonder that we have got 
into the happy position of a dog on the Derby 
racecourse ? " 

In the control-top above their heads the gunnery 
lieutenant was monotonously singing out the ranges ; 
five four double-O, five three five 0, five three two 
five. Closing rapidly. 

" See that ? They've started firing at us," said 
the Captain. " Watch the flash of their guns. 
There — that's another salvo ! Well, we shall soon see 
whether they are making decent shooting or not ! ' 

An unpleasant, chilly business, that ; to know 
to a second the exact interval of time between the 
appearance of those scintillating stabs of light in 
the distance and the moment when the salvoes 
would arrive. 

During these intervening centuries the Gemsbok 
went scurrying on at top speed over the smooth, 
dark sea ; and a tumbling wake of churned white 
foam raced after her, piled up and leaping on the 
after end of the quarter-deck which at that speed 
settled down low in the water. Scurrying on — not 
yet towards safety. Safety lay far distant, beyond 
the gauntlet of the enemy's fierce fire, through 
which the Gemsbok now had to run like a hare chas- 
ing along a hedge lined with guns. 

140 



The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



And then the first salvo arrived. The enemy's 
range-finding was good, but not quite good enough ; 
for nearly all the shots fell short, throwing up 
enormous waterspouts which hung poised between 
sea and sky and then collapsed slowly and 
majestically. 

Not all of them, however, fell short. There was 
one that found its mark on one of the Gemsbok's 
gun-shields, where it exploded and tore the gun 
from its mountings, hurling it across the deck into 
the sea beyond ; incidentally wiping out the whole 
of the gun's crew and leaving nothing but a few 
hideous red relics of sudden death upon the bent and 
jagged steel deck. 

And still the gunnery-lieutenant aloft in the 
control-top went on monotonously calling out the 
ranges. Then, a few moments later, came the 
order to fire. 

For, useless and hopeless as it might appear, yet 
fire from the guns must be maintained. Partly in 
order to keep up the traditions of the British Navy ; 
a King's ship, fired at, must fire back and regard 
neither numbers nor weight of metal ranged against 
her ; she must school the impertinent ; and even if 
the rabble drag her down she must to the last speak 
to them with the voice of Authority. 

' We must keep our end up somehow," said 
the Captain. It meant the same thing, in fewer 
words. 

Also, the order to fire was necessary, because even 
the best men going could not endure at such a time 

141 



The Curtain of Steel 



if kept in idleness. For the little cruiser was now 
being badly mauled. 

The day was still, and there was but little 
breeze to carry away the thick cloud of olive- 
coloured smoke which hung like a heavy screen in 
front of the enemy's ship. This lessened, but did 
not nullify, the effect of the German guns ; and 
were it not for this protective smoke-cloud the Gems- 
boh would probably have been speedily annihilated. 
As it was, she was hit again and again. Another 
gun was disabled, and the hull was pierced in many 
places, happily above the waterline. 

And now all the other guns had been silenced. 
Either they had been destroyed by direct hits, or 
else their crews had been killed and maimed. Every 
minute the ship was being punished more and more 
heavily. A shell swept through the signal bridge, 
directly underneath the place where the Captain and 
Commander were standing. They knew nothing 
about it, so great was the din and so many the 
falling shots, until it was required to send a message, 
when they discovered that the whole of the signalling 
staff had been killed outright. The funnels were 
riddled, and the greater part of all the upperworks 
reduced to matchwood and scrap-iron. 

But the ordeal of the gallant little ship was now 
nearly over. By great good luck her, hull had been 
undamaged in any part of importance, and her 
steaming powers were as good as ever. 

So at last she emerged from that fiery race, torn 
and battered and short of many a good man ; but 

142 



The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



still a ship in being. And she had left the enemy's 
ships with something to be sorry for on their own 
account also ! 

11 

There is a well-planned and well-kept " God's 
Acre " on the island of Hoy in the Orkneys, sacred 
to those men of the Navy who have laid down their 
lives in the war. 

Scarcely were the graves in that hallowed spot 
filled in over the bodies of those who fell at Jutland, 
when a fresh lot had to be dug for the Hampshire's 
men, such of them as were recovered from the sea 
after the sad disaster to that ship. 

It is indeed almost a miracle that anyone should 
have been saved alive from that disaster. To lower 
the boats from a sinking ship within the space of a 
few minutes when there is a fierce gale blowing and 
a heavy sea running — no one needs now to be told 
what that leads to, after reading about it so many 
times in connection with the loss of liner and mer- 
chantman. And the coast in those parts offers a 
poor hospitality to any storm-tossed mariners who 
may seek to make a landing ; the cliffs are the 
highest in the whole group of islands, rising three or 
four hundred feet sheer out of the water ; so that 
even if a man were lucky enough to arrive with the 
life still in him and find a precarious foot -hold at the 
base of those frowning walls, what chance would he 
have, sodden with water and half perished with the 
cold, of scaling those dizzy heights ? 

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The Curtain of Steel 



In the early days of the war, the sailors were pro- 
vided with swimming-collars for use in such an 
emergency as the sudden loss of their ship. These 
collars were of rubber, blown out and then closed by 
a valve, and were semi-circular in shape, thicker in 
the middle than at the ends. They were to be worn 
with the thick part underneath the chin, so as to keep 
a man's mouth and nose out of the water if he should 
become unconscious. 

However, there was an unsuspected danger in their 
careless use ; it is said that a number of men owed 
their deaths and not their lives to these swimming- 
collars ; jumping into the sea from the height of the 
ship's deck wearing the collar fully inflated, they 
reached the water with such an impact that the 
pressure of the collar suddenly exerted forced their 
heads back and broke their necks. After a while 
these collars were abolished, and a more efficient 
life-saving device substituted. 

12 

" What a terribly trying time you must have been 
through, during these past few months ! " 

I am now reporting a conversation between an 
officer of our ship and a dear old maiden aunt ; the 
meeting between them taking place on a subsequent 
leave. 

" Well, it was rather trying, getting him to toe the 
line. But it all went off wonderfully well, and we 
enjoyed it immensely." 

144 



The Curtain Proves Its Strength 



" Enjoyed it ! But that is how you naval officers 
always talk ! But it must have been very dis- 
appointing when they slipped through your fingers 
and scuttled off ? " 

" Oh, I don't know. It's the usual thing, isn't 
it ? We couldn't very well put them up on board, 
you know ! " 

" Of course you couldn't put the German Fleet 
up on board — how can you talk such nonsense ? " 

" Oh, the German Fleet ! I thought you were 
talking about Meredyth's wedding ! " 

Which shows how events alter their proportions 
when viewed in the perspective of ship life. The 
marriage of the Oaf seemed a far more important 
affair to us than anything else that had taken 
place. 

The bride came up North, for the simple reason 
that the bridegroom couldn't go South, there being 
no leave given for such luxuries as getting married. 

Our little Padre wanted badly to have a quarter- 
deck wedding, which he considered would be most 
appropriate in war-time ; though he could not 
exactly explain why, when pressed for his reasons. 
' " But, look here, Bishop," objected Hotham, 
who was to be best man, " are you quite sure that 
a perishing wedding on the quarter-deck is legal ? 
I'm not going to have my man tied up contrary to 
the King's Regulations and Admiralty Instructions 
just to please your nautical fancies ! You would 
get unfrocked, of course, but I don't care a blow 
about that — it would only be what you deserve — 

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The Curtain of Steel 



but it's the Oaf I'm thinking about, and his Missus, 
and the " 

Before he could finish his sentence the Oaf stopped 
him by placing a hand like a leg of mutton over 
Hot ham's face. 

" Dry up, you ass," he said politely. 

" And that's all the thanks / get," observed the 
Captain of Marines when the obliterating hand was 
removed. But he carried his point after all, and 
the wedding took place in a church ashore. 

So Marjorie Daw became Marjorie Meredyth, and 
a very sweet bride she looked. 

And the very next day we went to sea again. 
" Hard lines, old man," I sympathised with the Oaf, 
"to have a honeymoon of rather less than twenty- 
four hours ! " 

We were alone together on deck. "Don't you 
make any error," he said with a quite unwonted 
seriousness ; " this honeymoon is going to last all 
our lives ! " 

And, though a great many people have made 
the same remark before, on this occasion I knew it 
was likely to prove true ; for, you see, Marjorie was 
— Marjorie ; and Meredyth was— -Meredyth. 



146 



IV, The Material of the Curtain 



IV. The Material of the Curtain 



ONCE upon a time, in the long ago days before 
the War, I was standing on the high sea- 
wall that overlooks the harbour of Corfu. 
In the roadstead beneath lay the second flagship 
of the Mediterranean Squadron, H.M.S. Venerable, 
with the White Ensign at the stern fluttering in the 
breeze. 

It was a sight to arrest anyone's attention ; for 
the harbour is a beautiful one, sheltered by Goat 
Island and banked by the blue mountains of Albania ; 
and beside the natural loveliness of the scene, a 
man-of-war is always worth looking at under any 
circumstances. 

Others besides myself were evidently of the same 
opinion. A number of the natives were, as usual, 
leaning on the railings in happy idleness, but it is 
doubtful whether these should be reckoned as 

149 



The Curtain of Steel 



spectators of the scene, since they would probably 
have scorned the idea of taking the trouble of 
looking at anything, as being too much like hard 
work. There was an English gentleman, however, 
standing next to me, together with his son, a lad 
of about sixteen. Corfu used to be a favourite 
resort in those days, and many people came there 
for their holidays. 

Presently the lad broke the silence by the 
question : 

" Father, what line does that steamer belong to ? ' : 
" What steamer ? I don't see any ! " 
" Why, that one, down there." Pointing to 
H.M.S. Venerable. 

" That ! Why, don't you know, my boy ? " 
" No, Father, I don't." 

" Well, look at that flag hanging over her stern." 
" Yes, I've been looking at it, but I don't recog- 
nise it. It certainly isn't the same as the P. and O. 
boats have." 

" Do you really mean to say that you don't know 
what flag that is ? " 

" No, Father, I don't. What is it ? " 
" Well, that happens to be the White Ensign, 
and the ship is a battleship of His Majesty's Navy ! ' 



It was, perhaps, an exceptionally bad case of the 
disease of ignorance concerning the Navy ; but that 
the disease is fairly widespread it would be vain to 

150 



The Material of the Curtain 



deny. One would naturally think that living in an 
island as we do and depending for our very existence 
on " Britain's First Line of Defence," there would not 
be a single boy or girl who could not tell you all 
about the Navy and describe any class of ship you 
might care to mention. But, if you do think this, 
I can only remark that you are allowed another guess. 

I don't suppose that anyone in particular is to be 
blamed for the general lack of information about 
the ships of the Navy ; though perhaps the Navy 
itself is to a certain extent responsible ; it is all 
very well to boast of being a Silent Navy, and say 
of its men that " They Do Not Advertise " — but 
perhaps it would be as well to keep in remembrance 
the trenchant remark made by a critic of human 
nature who observed that whereas a silent man 
usually gets the credit for preternatural wisdom, 
the truth is, in nine cases out of ten, that he is 
silent because he has nothing to say ; also, that 
it may be very high-minded and all that sort of 
thing to refrain from advertising, but a firm run 
on these lines does not usually succeed in getting 
much support from the public. 

Quae cum ita sint, as Caesar used so pithily to 
remark, it may or may not be the case that the 
modesty of naval men is to be largely held to blame 
for a good deal of ignorance on the part of people 
who are simply thirsting for knowledge about ships 
and sailors. Yet, let the cause lie where it may, 
there is still room for a propaganda which would 
probably be greatly welcomed. 

151 



The Curtain of Steel 



At any rate, I can solemnly vouch for the fact that 
I was once asked by a very severe Rural Deaness, 
" Have you ever been on a torpedo ? " — a question 
which I had previously imagined to belong to the 
realms of fiction ; and another lady, interrogating 
me when my ship had just come into port after 
a voyage of two thousand miles across the ocean, 
asked, " I suppose, when you do go to sea, you all 
of you go ashore to sleep every night, don't you ? " 

But it is not quite fair to laugh ; unless one has 
connections or friends amongst naval men it is not 
so very easy to get an intimate knowledge of ships 
and their ways. And now that the war has with- 
drawn the Fleet so much from its accustomed haunts 
into places more remote, and has cut short all those 
amenities which used once to form so enjoyable a 
link between ship and shore, it is to be feared that 
a generation will be growing up with little knowledge 
of the ships of the Fleet beyond that gained from 
newspapers and books. Well, even book knowledge 
is better than nothing ; and I should like to feel 
that my pen had helped in adding to the store, even 
though I cannot hope to rival the graphic powers of 
a certain Chinaman who described a four-funnelled 
cruiser as " One large piecee war- junk, two piecee 
bamboo, four piecee puff-puff, inside walkee no 
can see." 

3 

New-comers, arriving at Scapa to join the Fleet, 
almost without exception remark how deeply 

152 



The Material of the Curtain 



impressed they are when the drifter brings them 
round a bend of the land and suddenly reveals the 
mighty Fleet at its anchorage, so great and over- 
whelming is the unexpected sight, as if a hand 
had drawn aside a curtain and revealed in all its 
majesty of vastness and numbers the Fleet which 
had gone silently away into the mystery of the 
North. 

Now, the naval man is not easily impressed by 
sights of majesty and grandeur ; he sees so many 
examples of it in his many wanderings ; and least 
of all is he liable to enthuse about the ships, since 
they are as a rule only too familiar to his eyes. 
Generally, his one idea is to get away from the very 
sight of a ship. And a common saying, frequently 
expressed, is " When I retire, I mean to go ashore 
with an oar across my shoulder and walk straight 
on inland till some one asks me, ' What's that thing 
you're carrying ? ' Then I shall stop at that place 
and live there for the rest of my life." 

So, if the view of the Grand Fleet at anchor is 
enough to make a hardened old sea-dog take a 
quick indrawn breath of wonder and admiration, 
it may be taken for granted that a landsman would 
not be behindhand in acknowledging the impres- 
siveness of the sight, if it were possible for such an 
one to visit the harbour of Scapa Flow. 

Perhaps the Fleet is seen to the best advantage 
from the higher land of one of the nearer islands. 
And the best time to see it is in the evening light 
of a summer's day ; a day, such as occurs fairly 

153 



The Curtain of Steel 



frequently even in the storm-ridden North, when 
the sea is glassy-smooth and of a clear light blue 
like the heavens above it. 

. In that so clear atmosphere distance seems 
eliminated ; the nearer ships showing up all their 
detail just like photographs viewed through a 
magnifying-glass, and even those farthest away 
appearing quite distinct in every line and feature. 
The pale bright light of the sun, still high in the 
heavens well away to the North of West, pours 
down upon the Fleet like limelight upon a ballet, 
emphasising the individual partakers in the mise-en- 
scene, while presenting it as a complete whole to the 
closely held attention of the onlooker. 

The ships lie so still at their anchors, reflected 
in the mirror of the sea. There is no breeze to 
enforce its gentle discipline upon the ships and 
make them all lie head-to-wind in well-drilled 
regularity of position according to their appointed 
lines, and in the absence of even " light airs " the 
minor currents of the Flow make curious play with 
the heavy monsters, turning them about and leaving 
them to lie in a strange jumble of positions, no two 
ships heading in the same direction, so that they 
look like a company of soldiers who have " fallen 
out " when they should have been standing to atten- 
tion and dressed by the left, and even the separate 
lines are no longer clearly marked, but merge one 
into another in a manner that makes it difficult 
for the unpractised eye to determine the line to 
which a particular ship rightly belongs. 

154 



The Material of the Curtain 



From the many hundred funnels of the assembled 
ships, not a wisp of smoke arises ; there is no sign 
that the ships are alive, no motion save that of men 
seen, like midgets in the distance, working or 
disporting themselves on the upper deck. And 
were it not for the fussy little picket-boats crawling 
between ship and shore or coming alongside with a 
noisy flurry of reversing screws, a man looking down 
upon the scene might almost believe himself to be 
viewing a forgotten and untended fleet of paid-off 
ships like those which rest in their latter days on 
the bosom of the Gairloch. 

To connect with such a ^cene any ideas of war 
seems altogether unreal and impossible. It is a 
vision of peacefulness, of utter quiet. And it 
requires a considerable effort of the mind, when 
looking at this fleet tucked away here in the far 
North, to grasp the fact that it is this, and nothing 
else, which keeps the German armies from pouring 
into England and nullifies all the German plans of 
world-conquest. These are but ships, numerous 
certainly but still easily to be counted, powerful 
but yet liable to many a mischance, a great Fleet 
but nevertheless dwarfed into insignificance by the 
surrounding hills of even such an inconsiderable 
group of tiny islets; but these same ships are, 
of all the material things which the brain of man has 
ever devised or the hand of man wrought, the most 
powerful factor in the world's history. Nothing 
in so small a compass, or in any compass whatever, 
in the region of human achievements has ever meant 

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so much as this Fleet, the Keeper of the Future, the 
Pawn of Civilisation. Let but a storm arise mighty 
enough to scatter and break these vessels, or let 
the hand of the enemy gather strength and skill 
to overpower them, and the world would no longer 
be a good and pleasant place for men to live in, 
overflooded by an evil tide of corruption and rotten- 
ness as when green fields and gardens become 
covered by a creeping irresistible bog- slide. 



Of course, the appearance of stillness and in- 
activity, in the ships at anchor is purely illusionary. 
In reality, every single vessel of those many hundreds 
is alive and teeming with latent energy. 

There is a tiny fly to be seen in garden or hedgerow 
which has often reminded me of a man-of-war at 
rest. It is a little yellow and black fellow, something 
like a miniature wasp, and I believe its scientific 
name is Bombylius — far too long a name for such a 
little insect. Bombylius is so swift in his flight 
that the eye cannot follow him. He appears sud- 
denly, as if magically created out of nothing or 
springing from nowhere, and the first you know 
of him is that you see him hovering motionless over 
a flower in front of you, and fixed at a point in mid- 
air as though held there by some invisible support. 
But Bombylius is really very far from being still ; 
in fact, it is only by putting forth a tremendous 
amount of energy that he manages to convey the 

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impression of being motionless ; his tiny wings 
are working at ever so many thousand beats a 
minute — as you may find out if you disturb and 
alarm him, for with a sudden forward tilt of his 
ailerons he darts away into immediate invisibility. 

And the seeming stillness of a ship is only the 
stillness of a hovering Bombylius. So is also the 
stillness of a fleet at anchor. Given the sudden 
alarm — as indeed it has been given, many and many 
a time — and the ship or the Fleet springs to life 
and motion almost in an instant. 

Down below, in that portion of the ship which 
lies lower than the level of the placid blue water, 
fires have been kept burning in the furnaces, and 
men have been labouring that steam may be kept 
in the boilers, while the watchful eyes of engineers 
have seen to it that the pointers of the pressure- 
gauges do not circle back beyond a given point. 

It needs but a quietly given order, and the semi- 
quiescent fires rage their fiercest, the pointer leaps 
forward on the dial of the gauge, the turning of a 
valve liberates the pent-up force of imprisoned 
steam and sends it quickly to the main engines. 
An unconsidered fraction of this waiting power is 
sufficient to tear from the sea-bottom those many 
(tons of anchor and cable which had held in place 
the dead- weight of the great ship against all the 
fury of wind and wave ; and even while an oniooker 
from the shore is still wondering at the meaning 
of these flecks of grey-brown smoke appearing from 
the funnels and hanging in a thin cloud over the 

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fleet, the ships have already begun to move, and 
soon are racing out of harbour like Bombylius 
disturbed in his hovering. 

All this is no fancy picture of what might happen ; 
it has happened, ever so many times, when we 
have gone out to pursue our search in the North 
Sea, reappearing after a greater or less interval in 
exactly the same spot, precisely as Bombylius does 
if you wait for him ; and it is happening still — • 
will continue to happen, in fact, until the war is 
over and the Fleet has spoken the final word. 



I have no sympathy with those many people who 
deny that a modern ship can ever be a thing of 
beauty. These laudatores temporis acti invariably 
drag out a description of the dead-and-gone sailing 
ship and start to raise a comparison. " Ah," they 
say, shaking their heads, " those were the days when 
a ship was a ship ! A first -rater under full sail, 
that was a thing of beauty, if you like ! " And so 
on, for as long as they can find a listener. 

All of these laudatory remarks are, no doubt, 
perfectly true ; a man-of-war of Nelson's days, and 
for the fifty succeeding years in which the type 
survived, was certainly a very beautiful object; 
but to deny any beauty on this account to a modern 
ship of war is just about as sensible as to say that a 
motor-car must necessarily be ugly because it doesn't 
happen to be a stage-coach. 

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These amateur Ruskins who affect to see nothing 
to please the eye in modernity would do well to 
study Saint Augustine's treatise on The Beautiful 
and the Fit," — only, unfortunately, that celebrated 
Father of the Church never got any further than 
merely intending to write it ; but as it is now too 
late to hope for any fulfilment of the Saint's good 
intentions, one may at least be permitted to make 
a guess at the general theme of his contemplated 
treatise. He probably meant to say that a thing 
can properly be termed Beautiful when it is obviously 
and unmistakably seen to be suited to the purpose 
for which it is made ; and when also it harmonises 
with its environment. 

Nothing would please me more than to spread 
myself a bit in the elaboration of this theme ; as 
for example, to point out that if you were to see a 
lady in a ball dress following the guns on a grouse 
moor, your very pity for her inability to see that she 
was spoiling the picture would cause you to stamp 
her into the heather with your thick nailed boots ; 
but seeing that I am discoursing of ships and not 
of ladies or grouse moors, I will go no further in 
supplying the deficiencies of Saint Augustine than 
merely to point out that a modern ship fulfils both 
the necessary qualifications of beauty. 

See how completely a monster battleship suggests 
Power, or a destroyer Speed. Any one who had 
never seen the sea before could tell at the first glance 
that the little wasp-like craft was never meant to be 
the protagonist in a sea-fight, and that the great 

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floating fortress was not specially designed to get 
through the water quickly. Both types, and indeed 
all other types of modern ships of war, do in point 
of fact look precisely adapted to their individual 
purposes. 

The beauty of the old sailing-ship was the beauty 
of Gracefulness ; that of the modern battleship 
is the beauty of Majesty. Each is perfect in its 
way, but they are different ways, with much the 
same relation to each other as the beauty of woman 
has to the beauty of man ; and, ungallant though 
it may be, the opinion of artistic critics inclines 
to give the pre-eminence for beauty to the male. 

So on this count the modern vessel of steam and 
steel may justly claim a title to beauty, not only 
as great as that of the lovely old tower of timber 
and white canvas, but even greater still. 

And as for harmony with environment, who could 
ever look at a modern ship whether at anchor or 
under way without being struck with the wonderful 
manner in which it blends with the sea and the land, 
so much so that something seems wanting in the 
natural scene on the departure of this product of the 
noisy grimy shipbuilding yards ? 

The very colour, grey with a tinge of blue, which 
marks our ships and is so scornfully compared with 
the black and yellow and red of a previous age, 
is one which mingles harmoniously with every 
possible kind of scene, and looks well in every kind 
of light ; it is a neutral tint, clashing with nothing ; 
the colour of deep shadows, without which no 

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picture is complete. It was chosen, of course, for 
warlike purposes, as an attempt towards invisibility ; 
but if a committee of artists had been ordered to 
select a colour merely for the purpose of making 
a ship a thing of beauty, it is morally certain that 
this colour and no other is the very one they would 
have chosen. 

And if anybody, scenting boredom in the above 
remarks, and skilled in skipping, has arrived at this 
point without being convinced that a modern ship 
is one of the most beautiful objects in the world — 
well, anyhow, I think it is so ; and it is no use 
giving me any of your back answers ! 



6 

The interior of a modern man-of-war is a mystery 
to most of those who have no personal experience of 
it. I have met people who have expressed a mild 
surprise on learning that we do not run to swimming- 
baths and tennis courts like the giant Atlantic 
liners ; and even the concise explanation that these 
ships are built for fighting, not for pleasure, has left 
them only silenced, not convinced ; they still 
" can't quite see why." 

In a passenger ship the internal economy is quite 
simple and easy to understand, differing very little 
in the largest or the smallest of the type ; there are 
corridors with cabins running nearly the whole 
length of the vessel and enclosing a central engine- 

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room, with saloons aft and accommodation for the 
crew for'ard. 

But in a man-of-war things are much more 
complicated than this. The biggest battleship is 
hardly more than six hundred feet long— quite 
small in comparison with the Olympic or the 
Imperator — yet its interior is cut up into innumer- 
able compartments, like a chunk of honeycomb. 
A new arrival on board always loses himself at 
frequent intervals for the first two or three days, 
and it takes him weeks before he can say with 
confidence that he can properly find his way about 
all over the ship. Even then he only means those 
parts of the ship to which his own particular duties 
call him, there still remain many compartments of con- 
siderable size, approachable only by manholes, where 
few besides the carpenter and his staff ever penetrate. 

The similarity of arrangement to that of a honey- 
comb is made more complete by steel partitions 
running from side to side of the ship, transverse 
bulkheads as they are called, pierced by doors 
which* can be closed hermetically. The object of 
these is to render the ship like a lifeboat, capable 
of floating even if pierced in one or more compart- 
ments. Even the hatchways on the upper deck, 
the entrances by which one approaches from the 
outer world to this rabbit-warren, are made to 
be closed in like fashion, so that even supposing 
a ship were full of water right up to her main deck 
— the deck next below the upper one of all — she 
would still remain afloat. 

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There are diagrams in a well-known book on ship- 
construction which prove that when the Victoria, 
Sir George Try on' s flagship, was rammed and sunk 
years ago in the Mediterranean she ought, at least 
theoretically, to have kept floating if her watertight 
doors had not been damaged in the collision. 

A ship does not go to sea for even a few hours 
without the watertight doors being carefully in- 
spected and closed. And on such occasions, if one 
desires to get from one part of the ship to another 
it is necessary to climb up on deck into the outer 
air and then dive down another rabbit-hole lead- 
ing to the required destination, frequently being 
obliged to negotiate on the way a manhole or tw© 
which though kept closed can be opened if necessary 
and must be shut again immediately afterwards. 

Much space is taken up by the magazines. 
Amateur experts sometimes amuse themselves by 
designing a ship to carry about twice the number 
of guns generally considered sufficient ; they forget 
that a gun is not much use without ammunition, 
and that you cannot very well carry ammunition 
unless you have some place to keep it in. 

When you consider that each shell of the biggest 
guns is about five feet long and weighs somewhere 
near a ton, you can see that it requires a good deal 
of space to carry sufficient rounds to enable the 
eight or ten guns to keep firing for an hour or so. 
Even this does not take into account the space 
needed for the cartridges to propel the shells, or 
the shells and cartridges for the smaller guns which 

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may number anything between twenty and fifty. 
In fact, when you come to think of it, it is a wonder 
that there is room left in the ship for any other 
purpose when the magazines have been allocated. 

Yet there has still to be found space for about 
a thousand men to live in decency and comfort ; 
for stores and provisions enough to last them 
several weeks ; for fuel sufficient to carry the ship 
thousands of miles without replenishing ; and, 
lastly, for those very important things, the engines 
and boilers. 

Now, these latter form one of the main distinc- 
tions between a man-of-war and a merchant ship 
or passenger liner. The tramp steamer is content 
to jog along at nine knots and consequently does 
not require very large engines ; the great liner 
demands far more engine-room space to enable 
her to go her twenty-five knots, but then she can 
easily afford this space, being so large and having 
only passenger accommodation to consider. But 
the man-of-war that wishes to steam at twenty-five 
knots has a tremendous weight to carry in addition 
to her crew — the guns and ammunition mentioned 
above, for instance, and the massive armour on her 
sides— and, as a result, the engines and furnaces 
occupy a space very much larger in proportion to 
her size than is the case in Vessels of an unwarlike 
type. 

Roughly, then, t^he engine- and boiler-rooms 
run to about two thirds of a ship's length ; on either 
side, immediately beneath the upper deck, are two 

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comparatively narrow decks, one above the other, 
where the men live, taking their meals at movable 
tables and benches and at night slinging their 
hammocks to hooks in the deck overhead. These 
living-spaces are all walled in, on the outboard 
side, by thick armour, as also are most of the 
officers' cabins, and as the armour cannot be pierced 
for windows without defeating its object there is 
consequently no daylight, but only the light pro- 
vided by electric lamps ; this rule holds good 
everywhere throughout the ship except at the 
" soft-ends," that is to say the extreme bow and 
stern of the vessel where there is no armour for the 
reason that there is nothing inside at these parts 
of vital importance to the safety of the ship. 

A ship of war is, then, a compromise between 
weight and speed — and, it may be added, comfort. 
The vessel has yet to be designed which can go as 
fast as the engineers would like, carry as many 
guns as the gunnery-lieutenant would like, be as 
strongly protected as everybody on board would 
like, and still leave room for a skittle-alley and 
separate cabins for all the bluejackets. The marvel 
is that we have really approached so nearly to this 
ideal that even the enthusiasts in every department 
can find very little occasion for grumbling. 

Even the armour itself is the result of a com- 
promise. This, which by the way does not form 
an integral portion of the original structure, but 
is stuck on like postage-stamps afterwards in large 
slabs, has been the subject of discussion between 

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two opposite schools. One set of experts held that 
a ship should be protected by armour as thick as 
possible, and as much of it as could be spread over 
the ship's sides. The other set held that it was 
much safer to have no armour at all, as in this 
case a shell would enter at one side and go out 
at the other without doing any damage worth 
speaking about ; and, to a certain extent, this 
opinion has been justified by experience, since a 
shell has been known to pierce an armoured ship 
without exploding till it met the armour on the 
other side which prevented it escaping. The 
old cruisers of the Niobe and Diadem classes were 
built according to this theory, but modern opinion 
appears sound in its belief that whereas armour 
may actually be a danger in one particular case, 
it is much more likely to make for safety in fifty 
other cases. 

One thing, however, appears to have escaped the 
attention of pro-armour men ; or, if they did notice 
it, they did not see their way to meeting the diffi- 
culty. And that is, that when shells are fired from 
a very long distance they fall almost perpendicu- 
larly and are just as likely to hit the upper deck 
as the ship's side. Therefore, in order to obtain 
complete protection, the flat upper deck ought to 
be armoured as thickly as the sides. 

Even if this were done, the protection would not 
yet be absolute ; a case has been known, I believe, 
where* a shell has fallen short, burrowed down into 
the water, and risen again in an upward curve to 

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meet the bottom of a ship which it pierced, exploding 
and sinking the vessel. The case is not thoroughly 
authenticated — it could scarcely be, under the 
circumstances — but there is no convincing reason 
why it should not happen. 

Thorough protection against gunfire will therefore 
require that the ship should be encased top, bottom 
and sides by thick armour. But as this would not 
leave room for engines powerful enough to drive 
such a weight through the water, let alone for 
anything else, the matter rests at the same stage 
as most other human affairs, namely that you can't 
have it every way, and so must be content with 
what you can have. 



Having regard to the various types of ships, 
those of one nation are not greatly different in 
general design and arrangements from those of any 
other. There are, naturally, certain minor differ- 
ences, for the most part the result of each nation 
making its own experiments ; as for example the 
trellis masts of some of the American battleships, 
or three-gun turrets, or something designed expressly 
differing from the normal for some definite purpose, 
as in the German cruisers where the guns are so 
arranged as to direct the greatest mass of fire 
right aft in order to fight a retreating action— and 
a nice feeling of confidence it must surely give the 
German sailors to feel that their ships are specially 
built for running away ! 

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Except for such details, all ships of one class 
tend to become alike all over the world ; and it is 
pretty certain that if there were battleships in the 
canals of Mars they would be found, if we could see 
them, to be not greatly unlike the battleships 
of Great Britain or Japan. Just as the clock 
invented independently in China has no essential 
differences from the clock invented by Europeans. 
The thing becomes what it is by the process of 
evolution, and could not possibly be anything else. 

Now when you are able to say this about a thing, 
it amounts to saying that it is perfectly suited to 
the purpose for which it is designed ; and this is 
one of the chief glories of a ship of war, distin- 
guishing it very markedly from constructive work 
on land, where it is difficult to find a dwelling-house 
really fit to live in, or a palace where a king can 
do his reigning in anything like comfort, or a public- 
house whose interior appointments add anything to 
the pleasure of drinking beer. 

But a battleship manages to combine with extra- 
ordinary success the two widely different functions 
of a fighting-machine and a home ; and, in addition, 
throws in as a makeweight the faculty of trans- 
porting its inhabitants from place to place with all 
the ease and comfort of a magic carpet. I don't 
think that any one human invention could fairly 
be expected to do more than this ; and the nearest 
approach to such a complication of perfections that 
I can think of in the realms of nature is the terrestrial 
globe itself — and even this is a bad second, because 

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it cannot engage in a scrap with another planet 
without fatal results to the whole of its ship's 
company. 

8 

One frequently hears the expression that So-and- 
So is in " the very latest type of battleship." But 
to speak with absolute precision there is never 
any such thing existing as a ship of the very latest 
type ; no sooner is a ship commissioned than she 
at once begins to become obsolete, because there is 
certain to be another ship of an improved type well 
advanced in the process of building. In fact, this 
latter ship may herself be superseded, long before 
ever she feels the water, by yet another vessel just 
commenced on the building-stocks. New types of 
ships follow one another like flowers on a hollyhock 
stem, and there is always a new bud to replace 
the full-blown bloom. 

This in no wav contradicts the statement that a 
man-of-war is the evolution of a perfect type ; 
the evolution is still going on, and new conditions 
are continually arising which call for new forms 
and methods. 

The average life of a battleship is somewhere 
about fifteen years. After this her usefulness is by 
no means finished, but she is no longer fit to take 
her place in the first line ; alterations and improve- 
ments in new types, slight and not very noticeable 
in their successive advances, have accumulated at 
the end of this period to such an extent that the 

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latest ship afloat is entirely different from the old 
vessel. Even the change from sails to steam, 
though a swift change, was nevertheless a gradual 
one, accomplished by several intermediate stages ; 
and the only instance in the whole history of naval 
shipbuilding where a great change of type was 
suddenly effected was the building of the famous 
Dreadnought, which in one immediate act made 
obsolete all the ships of all the navies of the world. 
Even the Dreadnought herself is now almost to be 
termed obsolete, so many have been the gradual 
small changes made since she was launched. 

I can never quite get over the wonderment of 
realising that every detail amongst all the millions 
in the construction of a ship is clearly denned in the 
minds of her designers and marked down on paper 
before ever the building is begun. It seems to me 
far more natural that very much of the work, and 
certainly all the minute details should be thought 
out and worked into the broad design as the work 
went along ; that one of the constructors should, 
for example, take a look at a compartment nearly 
completed, and observe, " Better put a couple oi 
ringbolts in the deck here, they'll be needed for the 
jiggers working that armoured hatch ; and while 
you're about it, there don't seem to me to be quite 
enough rivets in that scarf-plate over the beam 
in that corner — but it all depends what weight 
we put on the deck above," and so on. But that 
every single eyebolt, screw-hole, hook, and minutiae 
of every imaginable kind should have a pre-incarnate 

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existence on the blue paper in the draughting office, 
this has always appeared to me to partake of the 
superhuman, the magical. 

And although the ship makes her first appearance 
complete in every carefully thought out detail, like 
the lady and gentleman who sprang full-grown 
from the head of Jupiter, yet it is equally true 
that she is never finished building, and in many 
cases a ship is scarcely recognisable at the end of 
two or three commissions as the same vessel. 

This process of change can take different forms. 
In one ship which I once commissioned, the Com- 
mander ,took a strong dislike to any fitting which he 
considered unnecessary ; and in consequence the 
Indian Ocean was strewn from Gardafui to Bombay 
with an assortment of metal of various shapes and 
sizes which had been carefully and expensively 
designed by the builders of the ship. 

As a rule, however, the reverse process takes place, 
and at each successive docking something is added 
until the result is something like an Elizabethan 
mansion after it has been a few years in the possession 
of a wealthy soap-boiler. 

When a ship is first built everything that is built 
into her or placed on board is weighed with scrupu- 
lous care, and a record taken. Sometimes this is 
carried to an extreme length, as when a destroyer 
officer of my acquaintance was forbidden to take 
on board an addition to his private gear weighing 
ten pounds ; it would be exceeding the amount 
provided for by the constructors, it was said. Two 

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more guns were added to this destroyer afterwards, 
together with several other things, amounting in all 
to about a hundred tons ; but the constructors' 
ideas of weights allowed on board were not now 
quoted as laws of the Medes and Persians. 

9 

In spite of the many and widely differing functions 
which a battleship is called upon to perform, such 
as firing guns and steaming, she remains nevertheless 
a single instrument, a complete entity having divers 
component parts, and considered as such she is as 
delicate an instrument as a chronometer and needs 
as constant keeping in working order. 

This is not merely an affair of cleaning. Though 
cleanliness is essential to a ship and is maintained 
to such an extent as to have become proverbial. 
Scarcely a square inch on deck or below that is 
not scrubbed and swept and swabbed daily, some- 
times several times a day ; such bright work as has 
been allowed to remain in war time is kept constantly 
polished ; and the painter's staff, busy as they 
always are, find themselves reinforced by practically 
the whole ship's company every few weeks when the 
order, " Hands paint ship " is the prelude to a 
thorough spring cleaning and renewal of all painted 
surfaces both inside and outside. 

These little activities, however disturbing to 
one's comfort, are taken for granted as part of the 
ordinary and necessary routine. A more important 

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phase of naval charing is the cleaning of the ship's 
bottom, which must be done in dry dock from time 
to time. Even the best anti-fouling composition 
must deteriorate or become worn away in time ; 
and it is astonishing how soon a growth of weed 
can accumulate on the bottom of a ship, sufficient 
to reduce her speed to a very appreciable extent. 

Cleaning, however, is only a minor part of the 
constant care that must be taken in keeping the 
delicate instrument fit for service. There are strains 
and stresses to which every part of the ship is sub- 
jected, both by the force of the waves and by her 
own motion as she is pushed through the water, 
the whole two hundred yards of her, by a power 
applied at one single point astern ; there are torsions 
and disturbances, as she is dragged around in 
altering course or when a broadside of heavy guns 
is fired. All such occurrences are liable to set up 
derangements which must be measured with meticu- 
lous care and readjusted even at the cost of infinite 
labour ; because even very minute deflections from 
the true may become magnified by their effects 
into the greatest mischances. An error of less than 
a degree in the pointing of a gun, for example, 
may mean a good many yards of inaccuracy in the 
fall of shot at long ranges ; and a very slight bend in 
a length of shafting can lead to anything from a hot 
bearing to a complete breakdown ; and when the 
adjustments of a turbine are made to a thousandth of 
an inch, it will easily be understood that a moment's 
relaxation of the necessary care can lead to the 

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disaster known as " stripping a turbine " which 
can lay a ship up and render her useless for weeks 
on end. 

These be but bare facts, not very interesting 
perhaps in themselves ; but consider what they 
mean, when you know that the Fleet has been kept 
up to the highest state of efficiency all through 
these four years of war ! In peace time, to keep 
these delicate instruments in working order was 
almost the main occupation of the Navy ; now, 
it has had to be carried on as a side-show, at odd 
times and to a large extent unaided, without inter- 
rupting the grimmer business of war. , 

Incidentally, a little reflection on this constant 
duty of caring for a ship may serve to answer the 
question, so frequently put, " What on earth can 
all those men find to do with themselves on board ? ' 

10 

Ships have no identity in the sense that regiments 
have. The officers and men leave after two or three 
years and go to another ship ; and even the ships 
themselves have but a comparatively brief life, 
and then their names disappear from the Navy List. 
Hence it is that whereas a man who chooses a military 
career belongs to his regiment rather than to the 
Army, his naval brother belongs to the Navy rather 
than to his ship. If you happen to find yourself 
in a portrait gallery, and your curiosity prompts 
you to enquire who was that fiery looking gentleman 

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with the side-whiskers in the tightly buttoned scarlet 
tunic and stock, you are told that he was a captain 
in the Twenty-second, or the Berkshires, or the 
Artillery, as the case may be ; but the blue-coated 
gent in the frame beside him is only given the general 
description of " a captain in the Navy," without 
particularising the ships in which he spent his 
career. 

True, there is an attempt made to foster a con- 
tinuity of a sort by reviving ships' names of bygone 
days. The revival does not appear to be conducted 
on any definite system ; we have some ships at the 
present time whose names have been in abeyance 
since the days of the Tudors ; and, on the other 
hand, there are many cases where no sooner has a 
ship been broken up than a new one has appro- 
priated her name. The silver plate, trophies and 
presentations, of a paid-off ship are usually stored 
at the Royal Naval College at Greenwich, and in 
course of time handed over to the new ship which 
may chance to be christened by the same name. 
Many a mess is adorned with articles inscribed 

" Presented to the officers of H.M.S. bv " — 

then follows the donor's name ; you look at it 
musingly and remark to yourself, " Funny, I can't 
remember that name ; when was he in the ship ? " 
Till a closer glance reveals the date, and you realise 
that the giver must have been dead and gone 
these many years, or at the best must be living 
comfortably in retirement and old age, busily 
engaged in heaping verbal scorn upon the present- 

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day Navy and comparing it with the days when he 
left the old So-and-so, " and by gad, sir, a deuced 
fine ship she was, and as fine a set of messmates 
as ever commissioned one of Her Majesty's ships ! " 
And it comes home to yon that it was not really 
your ship to which was presented the silver bowl, 
or the candelabra, or the presidential hammer 
but a half-forgotten vessel of the times when ships 
were called " ironclads," or even an earlier craft 
dating back to the days of " auxiliary steam," 
when the towering white sails were still reckoned 
the only really reliable means of propulsion, and 
the " royal-yardsman " was the pride and envy 
of the ship's company. 

Such links with the past are no more than weak 
and occasional ; and the sort of tradition which is 
so intensely valuable in the Army, where a man's 
forebears have served in the old regiment for four 
or five generations can have no counterpart in 
respect of any one particular ship. 

Even the crests of naval ships have no tradition 
attached to them, and no official recognition. The 
only naval crests having the sanction of authority 
are the " Foul Anchor " and the naval crown — 
and even this latter has lately been handed over 
by the Admiralty to become the badge of the 
Mercantile Marine. 

Neither of these devices has ever been the in- 
dividual property of any one particular ship, but 
common to the Navy at large ; and this I am sure 
must have been felt a hardship to many sweethearts 

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and wives of sailors who have looked with envy 
at the soldiers' girls proudly adorned with the 
regimental crest in cunning work of the goldsmith 
or the travail of their own broidering-needle ; 
while the sailor's girl is unable to don any adornment 
to show what ship her Jack belongs to. Admiralty 
please note, and give the Heralds' College a job to 
devise proper crests for one and all of His Majesty's 
Ships of War. 

While they are about it, these heraldic experts 
might as well invent appropriate mottoes to accom- 
pany the crests. Amateur efforts in this direction 
are not always thoroughly satisfactory. 

A case in point is a certain ship which was very 
proud of its motto, a real Latin one ; the imposing 
legend was displayed in every possible place in the 
ship, carved, painted, or gilded with many elaborate 
scrolls and flourishes. 

I am not going to give away the full motto, but 
in it occurred the word " Fiducice " ; now, in several 
out of the many presentments of it, this particular 
word was written " Fiducia." The Chaplain, who 
was keen about such matters, was greatly worried 
over this variant reading which entailed an im- 
portant change of meaning in the motto. After 
much cogitation, being unable to arrive at any 
definite conclusion, he finally decided to consult 
the Heralds' College on the point. The obliging 
specialists sent him reams of stuff about it, with the 
sole result of still further complicating the matter. 

Just then a Chief Gunner, who had formerly 

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been in the ship, rejoined her after an absence of a 
few years. And the Chaplain, not wishing to let 
slip any chance of information about the motto, 
asked him, as one who remembered the ship's past 
history, if he could throw any light upon the origin 
of the famous motto. 

" Why, bless 'ee, sir," said the Chief Gunner, 
" / made up that motto ! The Commander says to 
me one night, 'Mr. Dispart, I want you to make 
up some sort of a motto for this ship ; we had one in 
my last ship, a real fine one with long Latin words 
in it, and it was much admired, and I'm dashed if 
I'm going to come to a ship without a motto at 
all, so please look slippy and make one up. 9 Well, 
I borrowed a Latin dictionary and got to work ; 
but I couldn't find anything about torpedoes in it 
■ — the Commander was a torpedoman, so I wanted to 
get the right side of him ; but in the end I knocked 
together something that seemed to meet the case, 
and reported to the Commander that I had done so. 
' That's all right," he says, ' and tell the painter to 
splash it about over the ship and I'll come and see 
what it looks like when he's finished.' Well, though 
I says it myself, that motto looked a first-class 
article when Putty had put it into Gothic characters ; 
but you know what Commanders are — they must 
make out they know more than anybody else, and 
never let on when they don't know nothing at all ; 
ours just cocked an eye at my Latin words, and said, 
4 1 don't quite like the look of that ; too many E's 
about it — take some of 'em out.' And that's why 

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you find Fiducice in some places and Fiducia in 
others ! " 

11 

Although there is no continuity attaching to ships, 
of the kind that gives rise to traditions and legends 
there is yet, for all that, another sort of continuity 
of a very unique sort. I suppose there is hardly any 
human contrivance older than a ship ; when 
primeval man first took to digging for himself 
a cave in the hillside for shelter he had probably 
been accustomed for many generations to sitting 
astride a log and propelling it with hands and feet 
in order to cross a stream ; ships must be older 
even than houses. Yet there is nothing that has 
changed so little. In spite of modern scientific 
improvements and developments, a ship remains to 
all intents and purposes nothing more than a hol- 
lowed-out log from which you throw stones at the 
enemy. 

One very often hears the question propounded. 
' What would Nelson do, supposing he were to 
come to life again and find himself on board a 
modern battleship ? " The answer is not very 
difficult to guess ; he would require perhaps a week 
or two in order to make himself acquainted with 
the advances made since his day, and then he would 
be just as much at home as he was in the old Victory. 
Before anything else, the first object in the design 
and construction of a ship is to enable her to with- 
stand the force of the wind and the waves ; and 

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these remain the same as they were at the beginning 
of things. 

That is why, on stepping on board the most ultra- 
modern ship that floats, one is immediately trans- 
ported back to the days of the primal adventurer 
who put to sea before history was written, and 
becomes a contemporary of all sailors throughout 
all the centuries. 

And perhaps this explains — at any rate it pleases 
me to advance the theory — why sailors as a class 
are simple-minded and simple-hearted folk ; it is 
the ship that moulds them gently into the form and 
fashion of bygone times, when seafaring men 
reckoned the elements their worst foes, and when all 
their loves and hates were equally elemental and 
open. 

Rocks and reefs are feared as much by the navi- 
gator who guides his thirty thousand tons of steel 
as they were by the helmsman of the frail craft 
in which Ulysses sailed. An appointment to the 
very latest battleship or cruiser means the same 
rending of home-ties as was felt by the sailors 
who manned King Alfred's Fleet. The last sight 
of the coast of Britain from the deck is still able 
to give a heart -ache not different from that felt by 
the men who sailed in the Mayflower. And, when 
the crash of battle comes, there is little besides 
the substitution of gun for catapult to differentiate 
the fray from the battling onslaught of Roman and 
Punic galleys. 

Such things form innumerable links with all the 

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past, and make the trade of the seaman — especially 
the fighting seaman — a thing that is as old as the 
centuries and as new as yesterday. . The' " great 
handsome lofty vessel, with sails of comely canvas 
and new apparatus," in which Sindbad embarked on 
his adventurous voyaging, and the " ship of about 
one hundred and twenty ton burden, carrying 
six guns and fourteen men besides the master and 
his boy," from the wreck of which Robinson Crusoe 
escaped to his wonderful island, were both of them 
so similar to a modern Super-Dreadnought in all 
essentials that a seaman of to-day might be trans- 
lated back to either, and in half-an-hour feel himself 
thoroughly at home. 

Herein lies the real continuity of ship life, a far 
greater thing than any mere regimental tradition, 
making for brotherhood between all who, in the 
merchant-sailor's phrase, " use the sea. 5 



?? 



12 

Just as a single ship has a character and per- 
sonality of its own so also has a fleet. Directly 
a number of ships are congregated into a fleet, a 
completely new entity is formed, as a chain becomes 
a thing entirely different from the links of which 
it is composed. 

A cargo boat or passenger vessel is always alone 
and on its own ; a man-of-war, and especially 
a battleship, scarcely ever. A battleship operating 
singly would be about as much use as a single 

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piece on a chessboard ; at sea, she takes her ap- 
pointed place with the others of her particular 
squadron, and the squadron fills just one part of the 
line of the whole fleet ; and everything that is done 
on board has to be considered in the light of the 
fleet's needs, the ship's personality being subordi- 
nated to that of the squadron, and the squadron's 
to that of the fleet. 

Now this constitutes one of the greatest factors 
of naval life, a factor which can hardly be appre- 
ciated by friends from the shore who come on board 
to visit a ship without a thought of the squadron 
in which that ship forms but a single unit. Yet 
the fact of being a part of a fleet has an enormous 
influence upon the life of a ship, with all those 
untold advantages of team-work which make 
cricket and football superior as games to the in- 
dividualistic golf or tennis. 

The ideal fleet must be something more than a 
mere collection of ships ; each separate squadron, 
if not the whole assemblage of squadrons, should 
be formed of ships of the same class, with the 
same steaming capabilities and turning circles for 
manoeuvring and the same number and calibre oi 
guns for concentration of fire. 

The less a fleet approximates to this ideal the 
more difficult it becomes to handle it efficiently, 
and although a certain degres of divergence may 
be allowed, there comes a point when a ship or 
squadron of a different class can become a positive 
hindrance and even a danger to the others. 

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Happily, the Grand Fleet and its component 
squadrons fulfil these desired conditions more 
perfectly than has ever been known before since 
modern fleets were invented, and it is this fact just 
as much as the Grand Fleet's numerical superiority 
which makes it such a trustworthy Curtain of Safety. 

Perhaps the consciousness of belonging to the 
most magnificent fleet of fighting ships the world 
has ever seen may possibly make its members assume 
an air of pride just the least bit irritating to those 
others who have done their job equally well else- 
where ; I would be the last to deny it, having 
listened to various remarks which I refrain from 
quoting about " You fellows in the Grand Fleet " ; 
but after all, it is largely a matter of luck whether 
one happens to be sent to this or that billet, and one 
has a right to be proud of one's good luck, so long 
as it is recognised as luck and not mistaken for merit. 

And, certainly, the Grand Fleet is something 
to be proud of. I fancy that in the yet far distant 
years, when the midshipmen and ship's boys of to- 
day are turned to garrulous old greybeards delighting 
to indulge in a chin-wag with other old cronies about 
past days ; when one talks of his ship, and another 
becomes reminiscent concerning his favourite foreign 
station, and all try to outvie one another in the 
recital of their old experiences ; the proudest 
ancient of them all will be he who can straighten his 
bowed head and stick out his sunken chest with 
the crowning boast : 

" But I was in the Grand Fleet ! " 

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V. The Curtain Raised 



HOTHAM had a brother who had been in 
France from the very beginning of the 
war and had come through the hottest 
fighting without so much as a scratch. After two 
full years of immunity, however, he came in for 
what was a good deal worse than a wound, namely, 
a pretty bad attack of shellshock and was invalided 
home. He spent some months in hospital, ad- 
vancing from the worst stage of complete loss of 
memory with concomitant horrors, through the 
convalescent conditions during which he was in a 
sanatorium, to the final stage of recovery, or at 
least of sufficient recovery to enable him to go 
home. 

Then he wrote to his brother in our ship sug- 
gesting that he would like to spend a week or two 
on board us if such a thing could be arranged. 

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There was not the slightest difficulty in fixing 
the matter up, and in due course he came. 

We found him a very pleasant fellow, not unlike 
his brother in appearance but very dissimilar in 
manner, as he was distinctly quiet, and his con- 
versation was not garnished with the decorative 
verbiage of our Marine Officer. He quickly made 
himself at home and settled down to ship life, and 
except for a little jumpiness at sudden noises and 
a very slight tendency to lose his grasp of a pro- 
longed conversation he seemed to be perfectly fit 
again. He took part eagerly in everything that 
went on in the line of our mild amusements, and 
showed the keenest interest in picking up all the 
knowledge he could about ship life and Navy ways. 
When he had been a few days on board, he heard 
that the ship was due to go to sea on the morrow 
to do a big-gun shoot, and he was quite excited at 
the prospect of witnessing it.. 

"What about your ruddy nerves, old chap?" 
his brother asked. " Those flaming guns make 
Gehenna's own noise, you know. Hadn't you 
better go to the beach till we come back ? The 
parson or somebody will keep you company, I 
daresay." 

But the other Hotham said that he wouldn't 
miss the firing for anything, and was quite sure it 
wouldn't hurt him. 

We all felt a little anxious about it, and were 
very glad indeed to find that he was not at all 
upset or ill when the firing was completed. In 

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fact, at dinner he quite bucked up and was^very 
cheery, so it seemed that the experience had actually 
done him good instead of harm. 

Then soon after dinner the mail arrived, and 
that of course absorbed all our interest for the 
time. Our visitor had a letter, which he pored 
over in silence, and when he had finished it he put 
it away in his pocket and became very quiet. We 
noticed this, and were afraid he had received some 
upsetting news, but naturally did not care to ask 
him. Presently he went to his cabin. 

A couple of hours later, when I went to turn in, 
I passed his door on my way to my own cabin, and 
seeing a light still shining through the door-curtain 
I just looked in to say good-night. He was busily 
writing, but looked up as I poked my head in. 

;c Not turned in yet ? High time you were in 
beddie-bye," I admonished him. 

4 I'm just going," he returned, " but I have an 
important letter I must finish first." 

Taking the hint, I shoved off and left him. 

The next morning he looked pretty seedy, I 
thought, there were dark hollows under his eyes, and 
he had the appearance of not having slept all night. 

14 Feeling quite fit this morning ? No bad effects 
from the firing yesterday ? " It was a fairly tactless 
query on my part, but I spoke without thinking. 
However, he assured me that he felt as fit as a 
fiddle, and had thoroughly enjoyed the shoot. 

4 But I'm fearfully worried, all the same," he 
continued, 44 and I don't know what to do about 

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it. Something must be done, and pretty quickly, 
too!" 

" Anything I can help in ? " 

" It would be awfully good of you if only you 
would ! You — and the Padre. Would you mind, 
both of you, coming to my cabin ? But not a 
word to my brother. This must be kept from him 
at all costs ! " 

I went and collected the Padre, greatly wondering 
what our help was needed for. And the three of us 
assembled in our visitor's cabin. 

He shut the door carefully, and pulled out a letter 
from an inside pocket. 

" You saw, perhaps, that I got a letter by the 
mail that came last night ? " 

" Yes, I noticed you reading one." 

" This is it. It is from a pal of mine in Ipswich, 
a chap who was too old to join up, so he went in 
for home defence — the V.T.C.'s you know. Read 
it, will you ? " 

This was the letter : 



2 

"My dear Hotham, — I doubt if this ever 
reaches you, but I am sending it first by a friend 
to the other side of England where he will post 
it, so it may just have a chance. 

" There is terrible news. The Germans have 
landed, and hell is let loose. 

"My brain is all in a whirl, and I can hardly 

190 



The Curtain Raised 



write coherently. I must tell you the facts just 
as they come into my mind. 

' There are about seventy thousand of them. 
Some of them who have been taken prisoners 
state that more will arrive in a day or two. People 
are saying this is impossible. Well, they said it 
was impossible that any Germans could ever 
effect a landing — but here they are ! 

" They are entrenched at present. Rumour 
says that we are scraping troops together to 
attack them, and they, I suppose, are waiting for 
reinforcements. Not a word of this has been 
allowed to get into the papers, and you won't 
see it in your wireless news. As Parliament is 
not sitting no awkward questions will be asked. 
We are going on our old ostrich policy of pre 
tending nothing is happening, but, of course, 
everybody knows — though they don't know all ! 

' They came at night. There were eight liners 
of the largest class, packed stiff with men. The 
ships were run up on the beach at full speed, and 
the troops were cleared out of them within two 
hours. The coastguards and watchers were at 
their posts all night, and would have reported the 
affair, but the Germans had taken precautions. 
You know they had plenty of their kin in England 
to help them ; all the wires were cut, and the coast 
watchers were probably murdered long before the 
transports arrived. 

4 They brought no guns with them, only ma- 
chine-guns — and plenty of these, with ammunition 

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enough and to spare, as we have found out to our 
cost. But now they have artillery also. How ? 
By capturing a large ordnance factory and a 
munition- works. Our experts said an invasion 
was out of the question on account of this very 
thing, the difficulty of bringing over a sufficient 
number of heavy guns. The Germans solved this 
difficulty by not bringing any ; they took ours 
instead. We never thought of that ! 

" The first news was from a village ten miles 
inland (I mustn't mention any names, but perhaps 
you can guess). 

"A lad came riding in on his bicycle at three 
in the morning, and roused the place by his 
shouting. He had been shot in the neck and the 
side, and God only knows how he had endured to 
ride so far. He died an hour later from exhaustion 
and loss of blood, but not before he had had time 
to tell his news. 

" The Germans, he said, had made a cordon 
round the nearest villages immediately on landing, 
and then closing in silently had killed every single 
inhabitant, man, woman and child, to prevent the 
news being spread. The lad believed he was the 
only one who had managed to escape, and even 
he was shot at in getting away. 

" That, as I have told you, was the first we heard 
of it. Within an hour the roads were black with 
people clearing out of the towns and villages, 
going westwards, north and south. I cannot 
write of all the misery of it — but I begin to realise 

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now what it must have been like in France and 
Belgium. We used to read of these things, and felt 
a mild thrill of horror, but I don't believe any 
one of us ever took it in properly — it was all so 
far away. Now we know ! 

4 They were not allowed to go very far. The 
business had to be hushed up, I suppose. Trains 
were rushed along to pick up the people and carry 
them off to certain centres where they have been 
billetted, and a barrier of soldiers and special 
constables has been set up encircling all this 
district ; no one is allowed to come further inland, 
and no one can get in within the ring. 

i4 Not all the refugees could get away by the 
trains. The roads were still full of those who 
could not get places in the cars and trucks — and 
the Germans advanced along the roads behind 
them and fired into the crowds with machine-guns. 
Out of pure wanton devilry, it seems, for they did 
not attempt to follow up the pursuit, but waited 
till the roads were clear. 

;< Hundreds were killed in this way. But this 
was nothing to the other horrors we have since 
heard of. Let me try and tell you in proper order 
how things happened. By seven in the morning 
the Germans had advanced in five columns, fan- 
wise, getting as far as eight miles inland at the 
farthest point from their landing. There they 
spread their line into the form of a rough semi- 
circle, taking in the towns of and , and 

several villages. 

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:•" Troops detailed for the purpose immediately 
rounded up all the inhabitants of these places, 
and drove theni into the open fields. There was 
no chance of resistance. They had large placards 
prepared beforehand, printed in English, to the 
effect that any attempt on the part of civilians 
to fire on German troops would be met by instant 
reprisals of the severest possible nature ; and 
certain English-speaking men were sent into the 
streets to proclaim the same by word of mouth. 

" This order was obeyed, generally. People 
knew what disregard of it had led to in Belgium. 

But in the village of there was an old man, 

half-crazy, whose two sons had been starved and 
kicked to death in a German prison. He, before 
anyone could stop him, or even guessed what he 
was about, went out into the village street with 
a shot-gun and fired at the German who had just 
made the proclamation. He could not even shoot 
straight — frenzied mind and palsied arm — unhappy 
old man ! The German was only wounded in the 
shoulder. Within ten minutes there was a cordon 
of soldiers around that village and every house 
was ablaze. Those who tried to escape by the 
streets or through the hedges were thrust back 
at the point of the bayonet into the flames — 
not even the mercy of cold steel was granted 
them. 

"My God ! To think of it ! I have to put 
down my pen before I can go on. The horror of 
it all is too much for me ! 

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;t But that was not the worst. A more terrible 
deed of unspeakable treachery and savagery soon 
followed. 

" The inhabitants of the captured towns, who 
had been mustered in the open fields, were c(ivided 
into three lots ; the able-bodied men, the young 
women, and all the rest. Of these, the men were 
first marched off, and forced to help in digging 
trenches. Very many of them, I am glad to 
say, refused flatly, and they were bayonetted out- 
right, before the eyes of all the other people. 
Seeing this, the waver ers and some of those who 
had less moral courage, began sullenly to obey 
their captors. It is easy to blame them — but, 
after all, I might have done the same myself in 
their place ; life is sweet, and there was just a 
chance of escape. Besides, their womenfolk, at 
the sight of the bayonetting of those who refused, 
screamed and cried to the remainder, begging 
them to give in and do as they were told. 

4 There were, I know, some of the women 
brave enough to call out to the men to refuse ; 
but these cries were swamped by the general 
screaming, and only served to add to its force. 
So, many of the men shouldered the entrenching 
tools supplied to them, and marched away under 
guard. 

" And then, when they were well out of sight, 
the German devils separated the young women 
and girls from the other group and made them 
look on while the third lot, the old people, matrons, 

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and children, were deliberately massacred by 
machine-guns. 

" Even some of the German soldiers, I am told, 
found this too much for Chem, and were sick, 
physically sick, where they stood hemming in 
the two crowds. And one German officer is 
reported to have said that he regretted this 
apparent cruelty, but it was a military necessity, 
as they could not afford to feed so many useless 
mouths. 

" I have kept the worst of this particular 
horror to the last. Perhaps you can guess it. 
The girls and young women were all marched off 
to the main camp of the German soldiers. Oh, 
my God, wilt Thou not be avenged on such a 
nation as this ? 

" Of the men who were taken away to dig 
trenches, a few escaped, and when darkness fell 
a good many more managed to get away. It is 
from them that we have heard some of these 
things, and the rest has been gathered from 
German prisoners, for an attack was made on 
their lines soon after midday, and succeeded in 
a few isolated spots, though it was beaten off 
generally ; we had no organisation, and not 
sufficient troops on the spot to do the thing 
properly. 

" The men who escaped said they were not 
given any food, and none was going to be supplied 
to their unhappy fellows. The Germans' intention 
was to use them as labourers so loDg as their 

196 



The Curtain Raised 



strength lasted, giving them nothing but water. 
By the time they were quite exhausted the work 
would be mostly done, and there would be no 
further need of them. They will be allowed to 
die of starvation, I suppose, or possibly they 
will be shot or stabbed. 

" Later, Our guns have come up. I hear we 
have got quite a large number of them, and 
troops, too, more than I had believed possible 
for us to muster. 

" An hour ago our attack opened, and it is 
still continuing. The Germans are replying to 
our fire. I do not know yet how the affair is 
going. Pray God, we may wipe those devils off 
the face of the earth ! 

" The noise is fearful ! At every point on the 
sector we are bombarding their lines, and they 
are replying. They -must have made a large haul 
at the gun-factory they captured, if everywhere 
on their front they are able to keep up such a 
fire as they are doing at this point. 

"It is terrible to be incapable of helping, as 
I am. I hope to be able to give a hand with the 
wounded presently, but that is the utmost I can 
do. 

u A man has just come in with the news that 
three regiments have just detrained, come from 
somewhere in the Midlands. There are said to 
be some Field Artillery also. I hope it is true, 
guns are the only things for this business. 

14 Still later. There were guns with the fresh 

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troops, and they were not long in getting to 
work. I should not have thought it possible for 
the roar of the firing to be greater, but it is so — 
the noise seems to be getting into my brain, and 
I don't think I shall ever be able to forget it. 
But I think we must be getting the upper hand 
now. Pray God, it is so ! 

" One thing gives me hope, though it is a 
fearful thing, and that is that all across the 
country, right out to the coast behind the German 
lines, I can see fires starting — big fires. They 
must be burning the towns — fiends that they are ! 
But they would surely not do this unless they 
felt that they could no longer hold on to the 
country they have occupied. I wonder ! The 
blaze grows every moment, and the whole sky 
is aflame for miles. But the guns are still at 
it, the firing has not slackened on either side " 



I turned over the page to continue reading, but 
there was nothing further to read. The letter 
came at this point to an abrupt end. 

Our guest noticed my action and divined my 
thoughts. " There isn't any more of it," he in- 
formed me ; "I expect the poor chap had to pack 
up suddenly. Perhaps he had to give it unfinished 
to some fellow who would be able to post it for him 
from a place further inland. Something of that 
sort, it must have been." 

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" But," said I, " is this account to be believed ? 
It seems to me incredible ! " 

" Of course it's true ! " cried Hotham, a little 
testily. " We shall hear about it soon enough ! 
For the present, as he says, it is being kept dark 
as much as possible, and not a word is allowed to 
leak out through the press." 

"But," ruminated our Padre, "how could they 
ever get past our patrols, let alone our submarines 
and the minefields ? " 

Hotham half rose in his seat excitedly, exclaim- 
ing : " Isn't that just like our English ways ? We 
keep on pooh-poohing every chance of disaster, 
and saying it can never possibly happen ; by-and- 
bye r it does happen, and then we cannot for the life 
of us understand how it could have been brought 
about ! " 

4 I'll tell you what," I said, " we don't want 
to pipe this all over the ship. Let us keep it quiet 
for the present. If you are agreeable, the Padre 
and I will go and fetch the captain here to your 
cabin ; you shall tell him about it, show him the 
letter, and if there are any further steps to be 
taken, he is the proper person to decide on them." 

A curious idea had come into my mind, prompting 
me to make this suggestion. While speaking, I 
had quietly put the letter in my pocket, and taking 
for granted our guest's compliance with my plan 
I moved towards the door. The Padre followed 
me out. 

When past the watertight door that led into the 

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next flat we both stopped and looked at each 
other. 

" What do you make of it all ? " asked I. 

" I'm sure I don't know," answered the Padre, 
shaking his head dubiously. " I should be inclined 
to say that I didn't believe a single word of it, 
only I was rather flattened out on that argument 
just now ! " 

" Well, I feel much the same about it as you do. 
The letter reads like the truth, and yet there are 
several glaring discrepancies in it ; the sequence 
of days seems all wrong, for one thing. And did 
you notice what it said on the subject of gunfire ? " 

" No, I can't say I did, particularly. What do 
you mean ? " 

" Didn't it strike you that there was rather a 
good deal of harping on the noise, and that sort of 
thing ? " 

" You mean ? " 

" Exactly. And that's what I want to make 
sure about." 

How ? By asking the captain ? " 
No. I'm not going to the captain at all. That 
was only a blind. I'm going to Hotham — our 
Hotham." 

We found the Marine officer just coming out of 
the wardroom. Taking him aside quietly, I pro- 
duced the letter from my pocket. 

" Look at this, old man, will you ? " I asked, 
holding the paper before him. " Do you know the 
handwriting, by any chance ? " 

200 






The Curtain Raised 



He glanced at it closely, and replied at once : 
" Why, of course, I do ! That's my brother's fist. 
What is it — a leg-haul, or what ? " 



4 

The poor fellow must have been working at this 
pretended letter at the very time I looked in upon 
him in his cabin the previous night. 

No doubt the practice firing had been too much 
for him and had brought back all his nerve trouble 
again, though he had appeared to be none the 
worse for it at the time and immediately after. 

We sent him across to the Hospital Ship the 
same day, and within the week he was sent south 
to one of those places where they specialise in cases 
of the kind, and work such marvellous cures. 

' I don't think you need worry overmuch about 
your brother," our Fleet-Surgeon told Hotham. 
14 He has had a bad set-back, and it will delay his 
cure, perhaps, for many months. But he will get 
all right again sooner or later." 

Our cheery Fleet -Surgeon's prophecy proved 
correct to the letter. I met the ex-patient during 
my last leave, and he was as well and as fit as can 
be. But I didn't mention anything about the 
famous letter. I doubt, in fact, if he remembered 
anything about it — and I certainly wasn't going to 
ask him ! 



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VI. Keeping the Curtain Down 



o 



VI. Keeping the Curtain Down. 



ONCE upon a time I was in a cruiser which acted 
as guardship at that delectable spot, Port 
Said, for three solid months on end. We soon 
exhausted the recreations of the place, consisting 
chiefly of walks down the canal bank, varied with 
strolls out to the cemetery, where little armies of crabs 
scuttled across the road at the sound of approaching 
footsteps ; and we all agreed that these were the 
longest three months we had ever spent in our lives. 

But when we were at last released, and sailed 
away for Malta, scarcely had the land of Egypt 
sunk out of sight before we began to look back 
upon our sojourn there as the fleeting dream of a 
moment. 

The long drawn out vigil of the Grand Fleet pro- 
vides a parallel case. The Admiralty have recently 
given me four chevrons of silver and gold to wear 

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on my sleeve, signifying service at sea in the years 
1914, 1915, 1916, and 1917. I look at these, find- 
ing it hard to realise that it was so long a time, 
and try to recollect air the many things that must 
have happened to fill up that protracted period. 

But it certainly seemed long enough in the actual 
experience, and I suppose the reason is that so few 
really noteworthy events took place to act as mile- 
stones and landmarks on the long road. 

Or is it that the events only appear to be small 
because they are now receding into the distance ? 
Of this let the reader be the judge, while I confine 
my energies to the continuation of my chronicle. 



We had other visitors to the ship, besides Hotham's 
brother. Opportunities were given for Army officers 
to pay short visits to the Grand Fleet, and a good 
number of them took advantage of the offer, chiefly 
officers from the overseas dominions. They were 
detailed off to the various ships of the Fleet, and 
we in our ship secured our share of them. 

These visitors all said they enjoyed themselves, 
so I suppose they did ; but I can tell them one 
thing now in cold print which we found some diffi- 
culty in making them believe while they were with 
us, and that is that the kindness was really all on 
their part in coming to enliven us ; we were honestly 
delighted to have them, and rattling good fellows 
they were, all of them. And if any one of them 

206 



Keeping the Curtain Down 



should happen to run up against any one of its, 
at any old time, in any old corner of the world, I 
think there will be, as the classical song says, a 
considerable rise of temperature in the ancient 
borough this evening ! 

Imprimis, there was the cheery Major of the 
Canadian A.M.C., to whom we owe the imperish- 
able story of Medicine Hat. Don't you know it ? 
Then, perhaps, I had better tell it you. 

In a certain township out West the Destroying 
Angel provided a little mild excitement for an 
otherwise rather dull community by suddenly 
snipping off the thread of life of a young fellow 
whom nobody seemed to know very much about, 
except that he was a Mason. However, a funeral 
is something to be grateful for in a place where 
the only red-letter day for the past four years was 
when Abe Johnson's heifer ate the flowered bonnet 
of the Baptist Minister's wife, snatching it from 
her head while she was looking at the new season's 
coloured calico prints in the window of the one 
store in the township, on which the minister preached 
a topical sermon next sabbath, taking as his text 
' Thou shalt not steal," the denunciation being 
apparently aimed personally at the cow ; where- 
upon the rival Congregationalist man, who was a 
bachelor, and had never been asked to tea at the 
Baptist manse, waded in the following week with a 
stirring address on the subject of " Vanity," with 
special reference to the wearing of flowered bonnets. 

So it was considered to be no more than the 

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The Curtain of Steel 



fair thing to give the deceased young fellow as 
slap-up a funeral as possible, even going so far as 
to procure the services of a brother Mason to deliver 
an appropriate oration. 

Unfortunately, there was no one else of the 
craft in the whole township, so they were obliged 
to send and get one from the neighbouring township 
of Medicine Hat. 

This gentleman arrived as requested, and at the 
obsequies he delivered the looked-for oration. He 
said : " Waal, I can't tell you much about the 
virtues of our deceased brother, principally because 
I never met him and never even heard of him 
before yesterday. He may have been a durn good 
sort — probably was ; but nobody seems to know 
anything about him any more'n I do, so we'd 
better let it go at that. But I guess there's some- 
thing I can tell you about, and that's the smart 
little go-ahead township of Medicine Hat ! " 

The moral of this story lay in the application 
thereof. Our cheery friend said he didn't know 
much about the British Navy, except by hearsay, 
but he could tell us all about Canada, and we should 
all be made welcome there if ever we chose to visit 
that country. Here's to you, Major ! 

Item, another Canadian, this time of the artillery, 
who in a most unassuming and pleasant way gave 
up his time each evening to the delivery of informal 
little lectures, or, rather, conversational talks, on 
that particular part of the war which was within 
his own immediate experience ; and most fascinating 

208 



Keeping the Curtain Down 



were the descriptions and explanations which he 
gave, illustrating them with maps and drawings 
which were a revelation to most of us. He made 
no attempt to pose as a lecturer, but simply laid 
out his papers on the seat beside him, and if people 
liked to blow along he would tell them about things ; 
the result was that he always had an audience of 
about half the wardroom — and we learnt more 
about the war from him than we had ever been 
able to learn before. 

There were several other visitors, each one with 
gifts and graces of his own that made him a very 
welcome guest and his stay only too brief. But 
though I cannot chronicle all of them, I cannot 
omit the mention of Pa and Little Willie, the de- 
lightful pair who came on board the ship to pay 
an afternoon call, and stayed three days. It was 
the nicest compliment we ever had paid to us ; 
and I think that we all regretted that those two 
bright spirits could not stay three weeks instead 
of those all too short three days in which we were 
far less the entertainers than the entertained. 
The best of luck to you, Pa and Little Willie, and 
may we meet again ! 



And we had another visitor, who deserves a 
paragraph all to himself. This was none other 
than Harry Lauder, who was good enough to come 
on board one afternoon and entertain our ship's 

209 



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company in his own inimitable manner. And not 
our ship's company alone, for by the aid of our 
resourceful carpenter and his staff, arrangements 
were made for the accommodation of men from 
several other ships. The upper deck was just one 
sea of faces. Men who found no room on the 
extemporised benches crowded on to the top of 
the turret, and even out along the guns ; and 
from the fore end of the after superstructure were 
suspended three rows of staging, all filled with the 
bluejacket onlookers. 

Needless to relate, the entertainment itself was 
of the surpassing excellence which one has been 
led to expect from so great an artist. But I think 
that the " unrehearsed effects " were even more 
appreciated. Being induced to address a few 
words to his novel audience, the great comedian 
delivered a magnificent little speech, serious 
in tone and overflowing with enthusiasm and 
patriotic spirit, which evoked an outburst of spon- 
taneous applause from everyone who listened to 
its stirring words. 

And an unrehearsed effect of another kind, 
showing that Mr. Lauder's wit does not depend 
upon premeditated efforts, was when he first stepped 
forward to face his audience, and found even more 
striking than the assembled hundreds those mighty 
guns towering above him. 

A quick upward glance from his keen blue eyes 
towards those grim monsters was not lost upon the 
sailors who sat astride of them. 

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Keeping the Curtain Down 



" The guns are all right, Harry," called down one 
of the bluejackets. 

" Oh, ay ! Ah ken they're a'richt," came the 
quick response, " else ye'd no be haein' a ha > j- 
holiday ! " 



Aiad while I am on the subject of pleasant happen- 
ings I may mention the visits which our ship paid 
on occasions to a port rather nearer to civilisation 
than that of our first rendezvous. 

Nothing will induce me to particularise this place ; 
but I trust it is legitimate to mention that there 
were houses, and shops, and delightful picnicking 
spots further afield, and pleasant people very ready 
to offer the hospitality for which their nation is 
so justly famous. 

There were also rooms to let, generally at prices 
which argued a profound disbelief of the theory 
that the Navy is the Poor Man's Profession, More- 
over, the local landladies had evolved the idea that 
any enclosed space of the size of an ordinary boot- 
eupboard was to be considered a commodious 
apartment eligible for letting to the Sassenach 
visitors. 

I accompanied the Oaf one day on a search for 
rooms. After hunting vainly for a while, we at 
last lighted upon some which appeared really quite 
comfortable and not more than usually exorbitant 
in price. 

211 



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" And how about cooking and attendance ? " 
asked Meredyth with some diffidence. 

The good dame shook her head discouragingly, 
even disapprovingly, and unbent so far as to reply : 
" Oh, we couldna think of doin' that for ye. You 
see, we should have no time for our own worrrk ! " 

Yet, in spite of such handicaps the little place 
speedily became filled with all sorts and conditions 
of wives, from the blushing girl bride whose wedding- 
ring had not yet lost the lustre of the jeweller's 
polish, to the trusty partner who had already 
followed her good man to half the foreign ports 
in the atlas, and was ready to pack up at a moment's 
notice and follow him to the other half. , 

And there were children, too. Not very many 
of them, because it was too much of an under- 
taking for the majority of mothers to transplant 
their offsprings as well as themselves for so short 
a time ; so the babies were left behind in the care 
of accommodating grannies, who of course knew 
ever so much more about the proper upbringing 
of children than the poor inexperienced parents, 
and were only too glad to have this opportunity 
of treating the darlings as they ought to be treated ; 
and the older ones were left at boarding schools, 
bemoaning their hard fate, since they knew well 
what good times are to be had when ships are 
within reach — and ships had been so impossibly 
out of reach for such an age ! 

Miss Trythall was one of the favoured few who 
did come. The Windsor Castle chanced to be in 

212 



Keeping the Curtain Down 



company with us at the time, and of course our 
old messmate brought his small family on board 
to revisit their old friends. 

Nothing could be more delightful than to see 
them again, of course; but it was just a little dis- 
concerting when Miss Trythall, at a big wardroom 
luncheon party, stabbed the silence of a conversa- 
tional lull with the shrill question : " And how 
many children have you got by this time, Mar- 
jorie ? " 

The Oaf was, at the moment, engaged in emptying 
a tankard of beer ; he stopped, struggled hard not 
to choke, was defeated, and had to dash from the 
room, uttering wild and weird noises as he went. 

Madden rose nobly to the occasion. Fixing Miss 
Trythall with his glance, he remarked : " Pooh ! 
Mrs. Meredyth hasn't got any children ! She's 
nobody ! Look at me — now, I've got exactly four 
thousand two hundred and seventy-six little boys 
and one little girl ! " 

" Have you ? " exclaimed Miss Trythall delight- 
edly, " and where do you keep 'em all ? " 

" Well, as a matter of fact, I can't keep them as 
well as I should like to. I lost a couple of hundred 
of them in the post a week or two ago." 

" In the post ? But you can't lose little boys 
and girls in the post ! It's only letters what gets 
lost there ! " 

" Oh, yes, I can ! You see, I tie them up in nice 
thick brown paper and send them by parcel post 
to places all over England and when they come 

213 



The Curtain of Steel 



back through the dead letter office I post them off 
again somewhere else. That saves having to keep 
a house for them all." 

" But why have you only got one little girl with 
all those little boys ? " 

" Oh, because if I had any more little girls I 
should have to spend all my time answering their 
questions, don't you see ? " 

Miss Trythall did see, and the luncheon party 
breathed a sigh of relief and resumed the interrupted 
conversation. 

We went shopping almost every day while the 
opportunity lasted. It was a great treat to us, 
after having been so long deprived of the chance of 
doing so. The consequence was that we bought 
all manner of completely useless things just for the 
pleasure of spending our money. The gunroom 
officers, in particular, came off nightly to the ship 
laden with wonderful purchases, but they had 
slightly more sense than their elders, in that they 
mostly specialised in eatables to supplement the 
somewhat unexciting menus preparec} by the gun- 
room messman. 

The sailors also bought freely of such . gear as 
charmed their eyes, chiefly inclining towards fancy 
boxes and hand-bags, scarves and neckties, all 
made of bright plaid silk ; and one of the shop- 
keepers informed me that more tartan had been 
sold over his counter during our stay than had 
been used by all the clans put together since the 
days of Wallace. I think it just possible he may 

214 



Keeping the Curtain Down 



have been exaggerating ever so little, but he ought 
to know ! 



One of our midshipmen had, some time previously, 
left us to go to a ship of the nth Cruiser Squadron. 
His ship came later to our anchorage for a few 
days, and of course he quickly made his way on 
board to see his old messmates and relate his 
experience. 

But he could not tell us very much that we did 
not know before. We were all kept constantly 
aware of the existence of the nth C.S. and its 
arduous work ; how it kept up the blockade un- 
ceasingly, in the face of the utmost difficulties. 

There are so many auxiliary naval services, fleets 
of strange and varying types, subsidiary to the 
Grand Fleet, and each one of them has its own 
particular glory. But none of them can beat the 
splendid record of the nth C.S. 

Mind you, the men of that squadron have a 
proper idea of the value of their work. " If things 
had been left to us" any one of them will tell you, 
" we should have finished off the war in the first 
couple of years ! " And then he will mutter com- 
plainingly and moodily about the Foreign Office 
and those beastly politicians, with a fine contempt 
for all the niceties of international complications 
and correct procedure. 

Perhaps he is right ; and perhaps not. At any 
rate, he and his fellows do their work month after 

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The Curtain of Steel 



month, as they have done it since the commence- 
ment of the war, in the face of the tremendous 
difficulties provided not only by the politicians but 
by the elements themselves, and by the nature of 
their peculiar task. 

I said just now that we in the Grand Fleet already 
knew something of the work of the nth. C.S. Partly 
we knew it through the medium of intercepted 
wireless messages ; such messages were constantly 
being exchanged, and a very frequent form of 
them was something after this fashion : 

" Patagonian Steamship ' Las Olas,' Bahia 
Blanca to Gotenborg. Left October 18th. Cargo 
wheat, wool, and general. Description, two funnels 
paintpd grey with green band and black top. Four 
masts, black hull. Should be intercepted and sent 
in with armed guard." 

(The above signal is, of course, a fanciful one, 
well camouflaged so as not to assist the enemy ; 
but it is sufficiently close to type to illustrate the 
procedure.) 

Imagine now the ships of the nth C.S., all strung 
out on their own lines of patrol, stretching over 
the gap between Scotland and the North Cape, 
and well out into the Atlantic. Every single ship 
would have taken in the signal, and would then 
be on the look-out for the steamer described. 

Presently the Las Olas would come along, shoving 
her blunt nose into the Atlantic rollers and steadily 
forging ahead at her lumbering speed of nine knots 

216 



Keeping the Curtain Down 



towards the port where she hoped to be lucky 
enough to arrive without interference from the 
cursed British Navy, and discharge her cargo — 
destined finally for Germany. 

Perhaps she might somehow succeed in eluding 
the first line of patrols. Not always, of course, 
but there was just a chance. But there was little 
cause for self-congratulation in this. Another line 
was waiting for her, and another, and another, all 
spreading their meshes so that not even the smallest 
and nimblest fry had one chance in a thousand of 
getting through. 

So, sooner or later, the Las Olas would be hailed 
by some ship of the nth C.S. 

In the earlier days of the war the routine of the 
next stage of the proceedings was : The cruiser 
stopped when the steamer approached, and, lower- 
ing a boat in any sea not quite impossible — and the 
seas considered possible for boat work by the nth 
C.S. are such as a landsman would look upon as a 
most unpleasant form of certain death — the vessel 
was boarded and her skipper interviewed with all 
courtesy and consideration ; an armed guard of an 
officer and a handful of men was placed on board, 
and the steamer headed for a given base ; while 
the cruiser, having hoisted her boat again, dis- 
appeared into the fog-bank or the driving snow- 
storm, to sweep the sub-arctic seas upon her lawful 
occasions. 

Many and various were the vessels thus inter- 
cepted and examined. Ships of every nationality, 

217 



The Curtain of Steel 



most of them with their country's colours painted 
on their sides in enormous streaks and patches* 
making them appear more like circus posters than 
sober merchant vessels. Not infrequently on a 
foggy morning, when the ocean had been resounding 
with syrens and foghorns in every key from unseen 
ships all around, the fog-bank would suddenly lift, 
and disclose an assemblage of highly-painted craft 
that gave the impression of a coloured plate of 
Flags of All Nations. 

Some of these industrious merchantmen, however, 
were not so innocent as they pretended to be. I 
am not referring merely to the blockade-runners, 
the ships that risked capture or" detention for the 
sake of the enormous profits to be made by running 
cargoes to Germany ; there were plenty of these, 
naturally, and it must have been very annoying 
to them when the fine meshes of the net of the 
nth C.S. caught them. But, besides these, there 
were others ; others that suggested the precaution 
taken later by every patrol cruiser when holding 
up a merchantman, namely, that it was better to 
steam away and keep the cargo-ship dead astern, 
signalling her to close the boat which was dropped 
and left behind to be picked up afterwards. In 
this way it was out of the question for the peaceful 
tramp to fire a sudden broadside at the cruiser ! 

It must be, one would think, an uncomfortable 
sensation for the examining officer and his boat's 
crew, when the falls were cast off, to watch their 
ship disappearing into the distance and to wait 

218 



Keeping the Curtain Down 



for the oncoming merchantman, wondering if she 
would turn out to be just the ordinary cargo-boat 
with a short-tempered skipper grumbling loudly at 
the ways of the Navy, or something of the wolf-in- 
sheep's-clothing type. 

I daresay they don't worry much about it. 
Sailor-men are built that way. If bad joss comes, 
it comes, that's all ; meanwhile, get on with the 
work. 

So it is probable that there was not a trace of 
anxiety or foreboding when one day a boat's crew 
coming alongside a vessel was suddenly met by a 
volley which killed every man instantly. This 
much, at least, is satisfactory, that their deaths 
were of a kind which, according to the dictum of 
Julius Caesar, is the most desirable of all — the 
unexpected. And a further source of satisfaction 
rests in the knowledge that their deaths were well 
and speedily avenged. 

Yes, taking all things into consideration, I do not 
know that there is any seawork which, as a com- 
bination of deadly monotony, trying weather con- 
ditions, and occasional lurid moments, can hold a 
candle to the ordinary routine of the nth. C.S. 

6 

If, in some respects, our life was one of monotony, 
it was a life of changes in others. Winters and 
summers came and went, and these varying seasons 
in themselves provided changes far more marked 

P 219 



The Curtain of Steel 



than in the more equable South. Scapa, as I have 
already mentioned, enjoys a winter climate little 
more severe than that of Devonshire ; but it is 
darker, certainly, and is dowered with those special 
44 lighting effects " which are the peculiar property 
of the Far North. So in the dark months, there 
used to be sometimes quite a crowd gathering on 
the upper deck to watch the wonderful pyrotechnic 
display of the Aurora Borealis, which shines there 
with peculiar brilliancy. At other places visited by 
us in the winter months the cold was far more 
intense than in that particular base ; the decks 
were frequently covered with snow to a depth of 
several inches. We had a destroyer alongside us 
once, and in the pitchy blackness of one bitter 
cold night one of her men slipped on the ice-covered 
steel deck in the middle watch, and fell overboard 
between the two vessels. The shock of the bitterly 
cold water must have prevented him from even 
uttering a cry. He was never seen again, and only 
when he was discovered to be missing could his 
fate be deduced from the evidence of the marks on 
the deck where he slid and fell. 

In summertime the contrast was extraordinarily 
marked. Many a time have I stood and watched 
the men on the upper deck during the dog 
watches, and thought what a ripping film the 
scene would make if only there were an operator 
to take it. Several hundred men would be amus- 
ing themselves in the glorious sunshine, in many 
different ways, and no one party interfering with 

220 



Keeping the Curtain Down 



another, or, indeed, taking the slightest notice 
of it. 

The most popular form of amusement was the 
dance ; and the most popular dance was one of 
which I do not know the name, but I can describe 
it for the benefit of those who are more learned 
in such matters than myself. 

Imagine some fifty couples, all in bluejackets* 
rig, the " lady " frequently being a brawny, bearded 
seaman, each couple well and truly secured to- 
gether in due form — that is to say, the " gentleman " 
has his right hand firmly braced against the middle 
of his partner's back, while his left arm is rigidly 
extended outwards and upwards with the delicate 
fingers of the " lady " closely intertwined w^ith his 
own. 

When the music starts — and our ship was famed 
for a really good amateur orchestra— the fifty 
couples form up in line ahead and move off in a 
kind of minuet step, two paces advance, two paces 
retire, feet well lifted from the deck, toes pointed 
downwards. Really, I wish I could make this 
description sound a little less like Swedish drill ! 
This forwards and backwards business would never 
bring the couples away from their original starting- 
place, of course, so a waltz step is introduced into 
the proceedings at this stage, and it is performed 
in the way beloved of all sailors, that is to say, 
with a very minute turning-circle, or, as I have 
heard it described, " going round on a threepenny- 
bit." The line of couples makes its slow advance 

221 



The Curtain of Steel 



down the outboard side and back close to the centre- 
line of the ship. It is a very solemn affair, and 
the dancing devotees go through the motions with 
all due seriousness. Further, it is very like hard 
work, and when the energetic little orchestra 
crashes out the final chord the dancers break 
away, and find it necessary to mop their glistening 
faces. 

Not all the room was taken up by the dancers, 
however. There was plenty of space for other 
amusements. In one corner, for example, a pair 
of masked and padded forms might be seen lunging 
away vigorously at each other at bayonet practice ; 
in another, two boxing enthusiasts sparring ener- 
getically, gory but good-humoured. 

On the other side of the deck the horizontal bar 
would provide entertainment for a crowd of per- 
formers and spectators ; the former being in many 
cases very adept, displaying such skill as would 
have done credit to an acrobatic artiste at the 
" halls." 

If you would picture this scene aright you must 
also imagine a considerable number of other men 
threading their way from time to time among the 
dancers and the athletes : seamen, marines, stokers, 
sick bay men, bandsmen, and others, going to and 
fro on their lawful occasions as their duties required. 
And, besides these, little knots of men standing by 
the rails quietly smoking and yarning ; and, very 
often, another lot sitting on the torpedo net shelf 
with their legs dangling over the ship's side, all 

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Keeping the Curtain Down 



absorbed in the art and practice of fishing, and 
not without something to show for it too, as was 
testified by a number of nice little fish flopping 
about in buckets on the deck behind the seated 
fishermen. 

Yes, it all would have made a very good film ; 
and the necessary comic relief was there as well, 
since every ship's company seems to include one 
fat man who, by a well-considered provision of 
nature, is invariably the ship's funny man as well ! 



But I meant to write about changes other than 
those merely of the seasons — changes amongst 
ourselves and throughout the Fleet. 

For, with the war continuing so long, it was, 
of course, impossible to keep officers and men 
unchanged for an indefinite period. At the beginning 
the changes were few ; but when it became evident 
that the end was very far from being in sight — 
well, something had to be done. Otherwise — as 
we sometimes indulged our fancy in forecasting — it 
seemed indicated that, before the war was over, 
captains in the Fleet would be white-haired octo- 
genarians, the admirals doddering old Rip Van 
Winkles, and the junior snotties lively young 
fellows of forty-five or thereabouts. 

Obviously, this would never do. So, after a 
little while, reversion was made to the system of 
changes very much on the peace-time scale. 

223 



The Curtain of Steel 



In our own ship the occasions when we had to 
welcome a coming and speed a parting messmate 
worked out roughly at about once in a couple of 
months on the average. 

The manner of the new-comer's arrival never varied 
much. Any suspicions of shyness at appearing 
amongst strangers which a man may have suffered 
from in his early youth tend to become effectually 
dispelled after a few years in the Navy ; and as for 
making a fuss about shifting out of one billet into 
entirely new surroundings, there is no use in making 
heavy weather over that sort of thing when one has 
to reckon with the possibility of being pitchforked 
out to China or the Mediterranean at twentv-four 
hours' notice as a mere matter of course. 

And, after all, one ship is generally pretty much 
like another ship, and the vast majority of N.O.'s 
are quite easy to get along with. 

So the new-comer just blows in quietly, probably 
recognising at least one old shipmate or station- 
mate as he enters the wardroom ; someone takes 
charge of him, in any case, and shows him which 
cabin he is to have ; he makes his way there, and 
finds a marine servant already told off for him in the 
act of unpacking his gear — which, by the way, is 
exactly like every other N.O.'s gear, consisting of a 
couple of tin uniform cases, a well-travelled glad- 
stone or two, possibly a gun-case or a fishing-rod, 
and almost for a certainty a set of golf-clubs. 

By the end of the day he has settled down in the 
ship as well as if he had been there for a year ; and 

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if he chances to be a lieutenant his fellow watch- 
keepers will by this time have seen to it that he 
has already kept his first watch on board his new 
ship. 

But if all arrivals were more or the less after one 
and the same fashion, a departure might take many 
different forms. 

Frequently it was just a quiet fading away, 
especially in the case of those who had been long 
in the ship and wished to avoid making a parade of 
the breaking up of old fellowships. In such cases 
an officer would make every endeavour to disappear 
without the fact becoming known. Usually, how- 
ever, he was not altogether successful in this ; as he 
came up from his cabin to get down into the boat, 
he would be pretty sure to find a circle of his mess- 
mates formed up around the head of the gangway, 
waiting to give a parting shake of the hand and a 
cheery word to speed him on his way. And when, 
somewhat overwhelmed by this unexpected ordeal, 
the departing officer hurried down the ladder into 
the boat with his voice just a trifle throaty and his 
eyes just the least bit dim, he would look back to 
the old ship he was leaving — the old Home, he 
almost felt it to be at this moment — and, why, blest 
if there wasn't the ship's band lined up for'ard, 
coming entirely on their own without a hint from 
anybody just to put their whole heart and soul into 
the rousing strain, " For he's a jolly good fellow ! " 

But in some other <?ases the parting ceremonies 
were not conducted on such quiet lines. I have 

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The Curtain of Steel 



heard that amongst certain savage tribes where 
human sacrifice prevails it is customary to garland 
and feast the victim and, generally speaking, give 
him a regular high old time before sending him off 
on his long journey. I do not wish for a moment to 
imply that naval officers are a savage tribe, but it 
is unquestionable that a similar custom is sometimes 
practised amongst us. 

One of the Mess Committee sends for the mess- 
man some morning and informs him : 

" Look here, Messman, Mr. So-and-so is leaving 
us to-morrow. We want you to put on a real good 
dinner to night, the very best you can do." 

To which the messman, if he is anything like the 
standard type, resourceful and infinitely obliging, 
replies, " Very good, sir, leave it to me " ; quite 



unperturbed by any considerations of food shortage 
or short notice. I have sometimes thought that 
messmen must have invented some secret plan of 
keeping a ten-course dinner for thirty people tucked 
away somewhere up their sleeve or in a sideboard 
cupboard, ready to be produced all fresh and hot at 
any given moment ; if they haven't got some magic 
plan of this nature, why then I simply don't know 
how they do it— but they do ! 

The Commander, as the President of the ward- 
room mess, has the guest of the evening seated at 
his right hand. No, you needn't be afraid that I 
am going to imitate the complete newspaper reporter 
and describe exactly what a number of festive people 
have to eat and how they eat it. Let's skip all that, 

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and get to the speeches which begin as soon as the 
toast of the King has been drunk. 

And, on second thoughts, let's cut out the speeches 
also ; many a departing officer would be glad enough 
to do this in reality, though, as a matter of fact, the 
speeches quite frequently are really very good 
indeed. 

All that is necessary is that you should try and 
imagine an extremely contented dinner-party with 
the usual trimmings. The important thing really is 
the after-dinner entertainment, variable according 
to the nature and status of the guest of the evening 
and the mood of the mess in general. It may take 
the mild form of a massed game of snooker, three 
people taking turns at every cue. At the other end 
of the scale it can be a most enjoyable rag, which it 
is advisable to prepare for by removiug monkey- 
jackets, since these cost more to replace than the 
linen subsoil, and one or the other has got to go, if 
not both. There will probably be also a certain 
amount of damage done to the wardroom furniture ; 
but " it is a rich firm," and any naval carpenter will 
tell you that if it were not for this sort of thing he 
would never know how to fill in his time. 

And somewhere between these two extremes comes 
the festive sing-song, which is quite a popular form 
of entertainment since everybody can and does take 
a part in it whether gifted with a " voice " or not. 

Naval officers are not, as a class, musical ; they 
are mostly caught too young for the disease to get a 
real hold on them. But there are exceptions to the 

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rule, and often a surgeon or a padre can be dis- 
covered who has had the time in his early youth to 
learn how to run a piano. 

The Naval Song Book does the rest. And even if 
the words are a bit hard to remember, and harder 
still to read when there are about a dozen people 
trying to get a glimpse over the pianist's shoulder 
at the one and only copy, what matter, provided the 
chorus goes with a swing ? 

So passes the evening ; very enjoyably, as I have 
before remarked. And early next morning when the 
marine servants come in with brooms and buckets 
to clean up the place for the coming day, the cor- 
poral, a seasoned Old Soldier, looks around admir- 
ingly and approvingly, observing, " Yes, judging 
by the looks o' things, it must ha' bin a ree-markably 
pleasant little conversationy ! " 

8 

But of all the many changes which took place 
amongst us the one that made the deepest impres- 
sion of all was the change of our Commander-in- 
Chief. 

One frequently hears it said, on occasions of a 
like nature, that the departure is felt by everybody 
as a personal loss. It is, I know, a hackneyed way 
of putting things ; but I really do not know any 
other terms that so exactly express what Jellicoe's 
going meant to us all. In our own ship, I know, 
every officer and every man without exception went 

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about looking as though he were lamenting the loss 
not only of a trusted chief but a friend : and I 
suppose it was much the same in every other ship. 

Jellicoe belonged to us ; he had that gift, or that 
quality, of making all those under his command, 
even such as had never even seen him, feel that 
there was a sort of personal tie between him and 
them. 

People spoke about him very familiarly, as they 
would not have done except about a man for whom 
they had real love as well as high respect. Rough 
trawler-skippers would mention casually how they 
had cracked a word with Jellicoe, or how they had 
seen the little man on his quarter-deck last time 
they were passing ; they mentioned these things 
just in the same way as they would talk about 
meeting one of their old fishing-fleet chums— but, 
oh, the betraying glint of pride in their eyes ! 

4 'E's 'uman " ; such is the reported summing-up 
of Jellicoe's character by a bluejacket of the Fleet, 
and no lengthy analysis could hit the nail on the 
head half so neatly as those two words. Jellicoe's 
consummate seamanship, his perfect mastery of 
tactics, his marvellous cool-headedness, were the 
admiration of those who were in a position to know 
about such attributes of the Admiral ; but that 
which endeared him to those as well as to the vast 
majority who had little opportunity of gauging his 
professional skill, was simply the wide humanity 
of the man. 

Very typical of the humility which does not 

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always go so closely hand in hand with greatness 
as here it invariably went, was Jellicoe' s choice of a 
title for his viscountcy. Had he chosen to call 
himself Jellicoe of Jutland there could have been 
no room for anything but approval of such a title, 
combining a pleasing alliteration with the just dues 
of honour gleaned from a great victory. But the 
title which he did choose, Jellicoe of Scapa, was 
one which honoured not himself alone but every 
man under his command. Not everybody who 
worked for him had the good fortune to be in the 
Jutland battle ; there were very many who felt 
they possessed an equal share in the man though 
they never left the base, and these in particular 
felt the thrill of infinite satisfaction which really 
pervaded all when Admiral Jellicoe elected to be 
called by the name of that Scapa which he had 
made, and where also he made the Grand Fleet 
which achieved so much under his leadership. 



9 

" How many, did you say, were saved ? " 

" One man." 

" Only one man ! Good Lord ! Pretty awful, 
isn't it ? " 

" Bad show. Anyhow, the others probably didn't 
have time to know what was happening. That's 
something ! " 

" I hope so. In fact I suppose one may take 
that as a certainty. A quick and painless end — 

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Keeping the Curtain Down 



after all, what better can one ask for, in war- 
time ? " 

At the back of our minds while we were talking 
thus was the picture of a bright and happy young 
face ; the face of one of our junior wardroom 
officers who had left us only a few weeks previously 
to join the Vanguard. 

Just that close personal connexion, that one 
intimate link — it made all the difference ! I do 
not mean to say that without it we should not have 
realised the appalling nature of the disaster ; but 
this served to make the reality of it all the more 
sad to us, and we went softly, thinking of little 
else, for at least twenty-four hours : longer than 
this cannot be given to any shock or sorrow in times 
like these. 

4 Thank goodness we have at last dropped that 
rotten silly phrase of ' ships of no military value,' " 
commented Hot ham ; " that was enough to give 
anyone the ruddy heaves ! " 

4 Well," soothingly spoke the Paymaster, " they 
couldn't have said it in this case, anyhow. But, 
to take a fair view of things, ships don't count for 
as much as men, even the best ships ; we might 
have replaced the old Vanguard, but her crew — 
that is a different matter ! " 

4 Yes, of course, it's the men that matter ! " 
continued Hotham, still explosive and refusing to 
be calmed down. "Do you remember when the 
Natal went up ? Some female on the beach saw 
the flames going up and squeaked out, ' Oh, my ! 

231 



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What a funny sight ! Whatever can it be ? ' An 
N.O. walking past her turned and said to her, ' Only 
about a thousand men going to their death, Madam, 
that's all ! ' " 

" Well, you needn't be so hard on her : I don't 
suppose she realised for a moment what it was 
until she Was told, and then of course she was just 
as sorry as anybody else." 

" Hm ! " — Hotham was still quite unreasonably 
angry, and refused to be quieted by argument. 
Not quite unreasonably, perhaps, because the 
young officer who had gone from us to the doomed 
ship had been a special pal of his. So, headed off 
on one track he started on another. 

" Anyway, I call it very dirty work ! " 

" Too soon to say that. Wait and see what they 
find out at the enquiry. As likely as not it was 
the result of an accident." 

" Accident my foot ! I'll bet anything you like 
it was dirty Hun work and nothing else ! " 

" Oh, I don't know ! Remember the Jean Bart 
going up ? That was in peace-time — no suspicion 
of foul play there. And then there was the old 
Fox, when she was out in the East Indies — only she 
had her hatches open, so the force of the explosion 
came upwards instead of going downwards, and not 
much harm was done. But it shows that accidents 
of the sort can happen ! " 



"And why," queried Madden, breaking in at 
this point, " in any case, why do vou call it c dirty 
work ' ? " 

232 



Keeping the Curtain Down 



Hot ham, delighted to have an antagonist willing 
to fight with foils off, turned upon the newcomer at 
once. 

" Don't you call it dirty work, then ? " he snapped 
out. 

4 You mean, supposing your view is correct, that 
it wasn't an accident but a deliberate act done 
somehow or other by German agency ? Well, no, 
I can't say I see anything particularly dirty about 
it!" 

4 Then I'm sorry for you ! Not dirty work, to 
carry out a diabolical plan for blowing up a thousand 
unsuspecting men in an instant ? " 

4 Well, a mine or a torpedo would do the same 
thing exactly, wouldn't it ? Where's the differ- 
ence ? " 

4 There's a great deal of difference. Those are 
recognised methods of warfare, and this is low-down 
ruddy treachery ! " 

4 Is it ? I'm not so sure. Supposing that you, 
at this very moment, had it in your power by pressing 
a button to blow a German battleship sky-high, 
wouldn't you be a traitor to your country if you 
were to refuse to press it ? " 

:4 Madden, you're a cold-blooded Jesuitical little 
beast ! You'd argue the Angel Gabriel into pocket- 
picking, I believe ! And as 3^011've got such a 
darned lot to say about pressing buttons, suppose 
you press that one over the settee, will you ? " 

Madden laughed, as he acted upon the broad 
hint and prepared to quench the heat of argument 

233 



The Curtain of Steel 



in something liquid. " After all," said he, " I 
don't suppose anybody will ever know the real 
cause of it, so where's the sense of our cagging ? 
All we know is that there's a thousand good mqn 
gone to glory, and it's up to us to avenge 'em if 
ever we get half a dog's chance of doing so ; mean- 
while, we'll just carry on ! " ' 

10 

Three experts of a certain naval branch came to 
spend a few days on board us. They were pleasant,, 
quiet-mannered fellows, absorbed in their own 
particular work, as most specialists are. 

Most of the day they were busied about the 
special job they had come for, so that we really 
saw little of them till the evening, and beyond 
seeing that they were looked after and had every- 
thing they wanted, we were hardly conscious of 
their presence amongst us. 

Indeed, by this time we had had so many visitors 
and of such varied types, that if a brace of Cabinet 
Ministers or an expert chiropodist had been assigned 
to us as guests we should have thought it nothing 
strange, but should have seen to their comforts as 
well as we could, and for the rest left them to fit 
into the routine, and make themselves happy in 
their own way. 

One thing, however, we always looked for from 
our guests and temporary messmates. Like children 
tired of their toys and not allowed to go out and 

234 



Keeping the Curtain Down 



play, we looked to a visitor from the outside world 
with the request, not always expressed in words : 
" Tell us a story ! " 

Anything to enliven the dull monotony of this 
enforced and unwanted idleness. A story, especially 
of what other fellows were doing, in the many 
spheres of activity outside the Grand Fleet. We 
had no stories to tell — that wasn't our fault, but 
the Germans', who refused to let us write history 
on the sides of their battleships ; we didn't exactly 
envy other people who actually did things, but we 
did want to hear about them, and if anybody came 
amongst us who had something to tell, why, we 
wanted to hear all about it ! 

Martin, the senior of the three, quite unexpectedly 
one evening ministered to our requirements, and 
unburdened himself of a story, unasked. 

We had already gathered that his principal 
occupation was Fritz-chasing — that is to say, hunt- 
ing German submarines. Though in what particular 
way he did it, or how his special branch of scientific 
knowledge aided him, we were entirely ignorant. 

Martin was sitting in a deep arm-chair near the 
wardroom fire, quietly enjoying a pipe and listening 
to the conversation going on around him, without 
taking much part in it himself. 

Our little Padre was spinning a yarn — as he very 
frequently was, in fact, so much so that at times 
it was almost impossible to stop him when once 
he was properly wound up. 

On this occasion his yarn related to a curious 

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The Curtain of Steel 



misadventure which, he asserted, had happened to 
certain armed drifters. 

An instructor, he said, was explaining to a drifter's 
crew the nature and use of the depth charges which 
had been fitted in the vessel. He was showing how 
the depth-charges were connected up with the 
electric battery, and how they could be fired by 
depressing a key when this connection was made. 

" You must be very careful," said the instructor, 
" never to press the key when the gear is connected 
up, except, of course, when in action against an 
enemy, or else you will blow yourselves up. So 
long as it is unconnected you can press the key 
as much as you want to. For example, with the 
wires as they are now I just press the key, and 
nothing " 

Bang ! ! ! 

Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the stern of 
the drifter was blown clean out ! 

" Which just shows," added the Padre, " how 
very sure one ought to be of one's — • — " 

" Never mind what it shows," we said to him, 
"we don't want any of that now — we hear enough 
of you on Sundays ! " 

Martin, who had been listening gravely without a 
smile, took his pipe from his lips and commented : 

" Depth-charges are all very well in their way, 
but they're not so certain as our stunt." 

Of course, we pricked up our ears, asking for 
more. 

" Did you ever hear of a brave U-boat captain ? ' 

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Keeping the Curtain Down 



he went on. ;t No, I s'pose you'll say there's no 
such thing. And I'm quite with you — in the 
majority of cases. After all, I expect the poor 
brutes get driven to sea without a chance to refuse, 
knowing that they're precious unlikely ever to see 
home again, so you can't look for them to be very 
brave under those circumstances, can you ? 

14 And a pretty mess they make of their job, too ! 
Why, with all the submarines they can rake to- 
gether, three or four hundred of 'em, I suppose there 
must be, what sort of a bag do they manage to 
make ? About a couple of ships a day — and that 
with hundreds and hundreds coming and going in 
and out of our ports, and hundreds more on the 
high seas ! Pitiful business, I call it ! , Why, if 
our submarine fellows had the same chances and 
didn't succeed in bagging at least fifty ships every 
day, they wouldn't wait to be court-martialled — 
they'd hang themselves with their own boot -laces 
for a set of incompetent ullages ! But those U-boat 
fellows, poor wonks, are simply scared out of their 
wits, and don't dare risk themselves too much. 
Can't say I blame 'em, either ! 

' But I did come across one chap that had some 
guts in him, once. 

4 You know the general lines we fellows work 
on, don't you ? We reckon that once we have 
sighted a U-boat it is all up with him. He may 
dive and hope to sneak away under the surface, 
but that doesn't do him a bit of good ! He's bound 
to come up again, sooner or later, and then Fritz 

237 



The Curtain of Steel 



has the surprise of his life to find we're still 
watching him. By-and-bye he must stay on top, 
to re-charge his batteries, and then — well, then 
we get him ! " 

It all seemed so very simple to our friend, who 
took his strange work very much as a matter of 
course. 

" But," queried one of us, " what about the 
U-boat man who had guts in him ? Did he put 
up a fight, or what ? " 

" Oh, him ? No, he didn't put up a fight — some 
of 'em do, now and then ; silly sort o' thing to do, 
o' course. Other times they just come floating up 
to the top and give themselves up quietly — much 
the wisest course they can adopt ; makes less 
trouble for all concerned. But the fellow I was 
talking about, he didn't do either. He must ha' 
been too game to give his boat up, and I guess his 
men weren't game enough to let him put up a 
scrap." 

" What did he do, then ? " 

" Well, there is only one thing else that he could 
do, and he did it. He just let his boat rest quietly 
down below, and blew it up himself. / call that 
darned plucky of him ! " 

We agreed. It was a plucky thing to do ; and 
a pity there weren't more U-boat men of the same 
type. 

" Yes," said Martin as he knocked out his pipe 
preparatory to turning in, " it would save us a lot 
of trouble if they would all copy his example." 

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Keeping the Curtain Down 



He looked at the matter from his own personal 
point of view. 

11 

This particular expert belonged to the Royal 
Naval Reserve. He was one of a great number of 
R.N.R. officers who cast in their lot with us, some 
for short periods and others for a prolonged stay. 
In fact there were many of them who took a per- 
manent place amongst the complement of officers, 
not only in our ship but throughout the Fleet. 

And a very good thing too ! We certainly 
couldn't have got along without them, when the 
Navy became so enormously enlarged. But it was 
a good thing also in another sense, the personal 
sense, both for ourselves and for them. 

This fact was put into words very aptly by an 
R.N.R. officer who told me what he thought about 
it during an afternoon stroll on Flotta. 

" The Navy and the Merchant Service will never 
be the same again, after the war," said he. 

" How do you mean ? " 

4 Well, we used to think of you fellows as a lot 
of toffs, with a tremendous amount of side, much 
too high and mighty to condescend to speak to 
people like us. So we just fought shy of you, and 
the less we had to do with you the better we were 
pleased." 

4 Yes," I said, " we noticed that, in the old 
days. And we used to think of you as a pretty 
average lot of stiffs, if the truth must be told. But 

239 



The Curtain of Steel 



we have changed our views a bit, on both sides, 
haven't we?" 

" I suppose it is simply that we have got to 
know each other. And both parties have made 
the discovery that the other fellows are simply 
ordinary human beings, for the most part real good 
sorts, with a few wrong 'uns here and there." 

" And you think that will alter things, after the 
war ? " I asked. 

" Well, don't you think so yourself ? Suppose 
a man-o'-war sends an officer-of-the-guard on board 
some big cargo-boat, say in Singapore, or Dunedin, 
or Halifax, in ten years' time. He steps over the 
gangway all togged up with frock-coat and sword, 
looking like all the Lords of the Admiralty and the 
Trinity Brethren rolled into one — and instead of 
everybody clearing off and wishing him to blazes, 
the chances are that some fellow will dash along 
and say, ' Why, blest if that isn't jolly old Snooks 
who was in the old Whatnot with me ! ' And then, 
of course, everything will be all right ! " 

" Yes, I suppose that's so. And even supposing 
jolly old Snooks doesn't recognise any old pals on 
board the cargo boat, he will know that some amongst 
'em are bound to be pals of his pals, so to speak ; 
and they will know that even if they've never set 
eyes on him before he is probably just the same 
Jdnd of bloke as the others they have met — so every- 
thing will still be all gay ! " 

Yes, there is no doubt about it, the Navy and 
the Merchant Service will never be " quite the 



240 



Keeping the Curtain Down 



same again " as they were before. And that's 
one good thing we shall owe to the war. 

12 

We had not seen anything of Trythall or of the 
Windsor Castle for a considerable, time. Those 
cheery little week-ends when he used to bring his 
destroyer to lie alongside us had been few of late 
months, and we missed seeing him blow on board 
amongst his old messmates, just as we also missed 
clambering down into the depths of his little craft 
" for social duties." 

But we understood the reason for his absence. 
TrythalFs flotilla had been detailed for convoy 
work, and this meant his being away for long 
periods ; even at such times as he was in harbour 
he could not afford to spend the few hours in the 
amenities of ship-visiting ; there was too much to 
be done about the boat. 

Then, one day there came a rumour, springing 
from no one knows where, that the Windsor Castle 
had gone down. 

We disbelieved it, of course. Several other 
destroyers, also chummy ships of ours, had before 
this been sunk by rumour and had re-appeared 
with nothing whatever the matter with them. 

A little later, however, came a report from a more 
reliable source to which we were forced to give 
credence ; the Windsor Castle was undoubtedly 
lost ; details being lacking, except on one point, 

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The Curtain of Steel 



namely that she was lost in action with the 
enemy. 

And what about poor old Trythall ? 

Trythall was lost, too. Trythall was saved, and 
was on his way back in another destroyer. All 
hands were lost. Half the crew had escaped. Those 
who were not killed had been taken prisoners. 

Amongst a mass of such rumours it was quite 
impossible to disentangle the truth. 

Then, after a while the real facts began to filter 
through. Two officers and a few of the men had 
been saved. All the others were killed or drowned. 
But was our old messmate one of the two officers 
saved ? Still we did not know. 

At last the full news came. And the great thing, 
the only thing, to think of was that our friend had 
maintained the reputation of his old ship and the 
Windsor Castle together in keeping up the old 
tradition and going down with his ship. 

Not yet did we know the way he met his fate, 
but of this we felt certain — that he had put up a 
good fight. 

For him we had no fears ; and, when we came 
to think the matter over quietly, not very many 
regrets. For the old saying is none the less true 
for being a platitude, that a man can die but once, 
and what better death can a man ask for than to 
die fighting the enemy ? So utterly hackneyed 
have such phrases become that we should have felt 
ashamed to repeat them to each other ; but I think 
we all felt their truth, and their consolation. 

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Keeping the Curtain Down 



But what of poor Myra, and Miss Trythall ? 
Ah, that was a very different matter ! 

" Women are the losers in every war." 

That was another trite saying which would leap 
to the mind now ! 

Those of us who knew the little house standing 
back from the Dorchester Road, pictured it as it 
must be now. We could see a dear light-hearted 
happy woman changed in a moment into a stricken 
thing, white-faced and wild-eyed, and shaken with 
tearless sobbing ; with an awed and frightened 
child plucking at her skirts, knowing with the 
wonderful intuition of childhood exactly what had 
happened, and striving to attract her mother's 
notice so that she might comfort her, and be com- 
forted. 

We could see the very fall of the blow. The 
young wife bravely trying to make the best of her 
loneliness by busying herself about the house and 
helping in the hundred and one things that there 
are to be done even in the smallest household. 
These things bring forgetfulness, and with forget - 
fulness an imitation of happiness almost as good 
as the real thing, until the time comes to sit down 
with nothing to do but — think ! 

And she would be chatting pleasantly with 
the maid, too, while helping her with the work ; 
for mistress and maid feel their common woman- 
hood a very close bond, something infinitely 
stronger than ever exists between master and man. 

Then there would come an unaccustomed ring 

243 



The Curtain of Steel 



atfthe bell. No one usually came at that hour of 
the morning ; the butcher had already called for 
orders, and it was not yet time for the midday post. 

We saw the telegraph-girl propping her bicycle 
against the wall in the road, opening the gate, and 
walking up through the garden, that garden which 
we knew so well, every detail of it. Under the 
beech-tree and so along the path to the porch of the 
house. The girl had doubtless taken many other 
telegrams of the same sort to other houses before 
now, for she knew what to do, just thrust the hateful 
yellow envelope into the maid's hands without a 
word, and go back out into the road as quickly as 
possible. 

And hdw the maid's hands trembled as she de- 
livered the poisonous thing to her mistress before 
darting away hurriedly to her kitchen, only to 
check her footsteps and come back and stand out- 
side the door ; she knew ; and thought her help 
might be wanted in a moment ! 

Then the tearing open of the envelope with nerve- 
less fingers- — the staring at the words with wild 
eyes that gradually became darkened ; and the 
eternity that passed while the telegram fluttered 
slowly to the floor though the hands remained 
stiffly poised as though still holding it, and the 
unseeing eyes still stared at the nothing they held ! 

Easy enough to picture such scenes ! Were they 
not common enough in these days for everyone to 
know down to the smallest detail ? 

But Myra must have felt comforted a little, as 

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Keeping the Curtain Down 



we felt not a little proud, on hearing how Trythall 
met his end, and how the Windsor Castle fought to 
the last. 

From the very first moment of the action there 
was practically no chance whatever. Indeed from 
the moment when the smoke on the horizon was 
seen to be that of three German light cruisers it 
must have been known that the fight was bound to 
be a losing fight. 

All thoughts were for the safety of the convoy. 
Directions were given that they were to scatter, 
so as to save some of them if not all. But the 
Windsor fiastle and her consort must remain and 
fight, if only to delay the enemy cruisers long 
enough to enable the convoy ships to get away as far 
as they could ; though naturally there was the 
hope of damaging, if not sinking, one or more of 
the enemy — one never knows what the fortune of 
war may bring forth. 

But the convoy was the real reason for putting 
up a fight. Were it not for them the destroyers 
would have run for it ; there is no sense in two 
destroyers imagining themselves a match for three 
light cruisers. 

The issue was not long left in doubt. It could 
not be, of course. 

A salvo came crashing into the side of the Windsor 
Castle disabling her machinery, and leaving her a 
helpless target. 

Trythall's cheery voice came ringing along the 
deck in brave tones : 

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The Curtain of Steel 



" Bless my heart, lads, we're not done for yet ! 
There's lots of fight left in the old packet ! " 

So the men — such as were left of them — turned 
to fight the ship again, stirred by the heartening 
words of their brave commander. 

It was a fine effort, but it ended as it had to end. 
Even the Germans, one would like to believe, must 
have felt something of admiration and regret as they 
opened fire again to deal the coup de grace. 

And our old messmate's last words will be remem- 
bered as an uplifting message by many besides 
those who first heard them through the fire and 
smoke on the Windsor Castles deck : 

" Bless my heart, lads, we're not done for yet ! " 

13 

Reckon this just as one small item of the cost of 
keeping the Curtain in its place. There is a price 
to be paid, not in millions alone, but in lives, gallant 
young men's lives, boys' lives, and lives of sage 
veterans invaluable to the State ; and in broken 
hearts and stricken homes also. 

Yes, this price must be paid, and paid continually, 
and I think one may say with confidence that it is 
paid cheerfully, ungrudgingly, on sea just as it is 
on land. 

For — is it not well worth while ? 

The name of " The Curtain," or rather " The 
Safety Curtain," is not one which I have applied 
to the Navy out of my own imagination ; it is one 

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Keeping the Curtain Down 



the men of the Navy have themselves appropriated 
to the Service to which they belong. Nor need 
you think that there is any trace of self-conceit or 
arrogance in their doing so ; it is only that they 
are clear-sighted enough to recognise two facts 
which a vast number of people do not appear to 
have visualised. 

The first fact is that the Navy really has been, 
all through the war, the one thing which has effectu- 
ally prevented the German plague from spreading 
its foul infection to — 

To the shores of this dear country of ours ? 

Not that alone. Though that in itself w r ould be 
service enough to merit the name ot a gigantic 
achievement ; and heaven only knows the abysmal 
depth of unthinking ingratitude of vast numbers 
of people in these islands who pursue their even 
way untroubled by the war, little realising from 
what they have been spared and still less grasping 
the fact that nothing on earth but the Navy alone 
has been their shield ; while, disappointed of the 
thrills to which they feel themselves justly entitled 
as taxpayers, and looking in vain in their daily 
paper for some dramatic story of a naval action, 
they want to know " What is the Navy doing ? " 

No, it is not our own country's immunity alone 
that has earned for the Navy its proud title of The 
Safety Curtain. If this were all, then we might 
justly be accused of selfishly forgetting the miseries 
of those allied countries which have not shared the 
security of our sea-barrier. 

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The Curtain of Steel 



The deeper truth is that the Navy has been, and 
still is, a Safety-Curtain not merely between Ger- 
many and Great Britain, but between Germanism 
and Civilisation. 

I wish some clever essayist would expand this 
simple fact and make a popular pamphlet out of it 
to be distributed by the million. It is a task that 
would be well worth doing, if someone could be 
found to tackle it, writing it so that the plain man 
could understand and the deep-learned highbrow 
who has inclined his ear to Germany's persuasive 
talk about the Freedom of the Seas might be led to 
reconsider his theories. 

And the other fact which the sailor-man sees 
perhaps a little more clearly than the majority of 
other folk is that the Navy by itself alone is able 
to win this war. 

To say this is not in any sense to belittle the 
magnificent achievements of those incomparable 
heroes, our soldiers ; who, indeed, but a madman 
could dream of doing so ? They need no encomium 
— it Would be almost an impertinence to attempt 
one ; their deeds speak for themselves. 

But the fact remains that, supposing (to make 
the case as absurdly exaggerated as possible) our 
armies in every field were scattered and broken by 
the enemy ; supposing that the Germans were free 
to overrun the whole of the continent of Europe to 
its farthest corner ; supposing that Germany were 
able to feed her people from the conquered terri- 
tories and to exact indemnities — even then, so long 

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Keeping the Curtain Down 



as the Navy remained intact and unbeaten, Germany 
would be forced, sooner or later, to disgorge every 
single one of her ill-gotten gains and to sue humbly 
for our terms of peace. 

Because — to state the reason as briefly as 
possible — Germany and German trade must have 
an outlet to the outer world, and to this door the 
British Navy holds the key. 

The rulers of Germany know this very well — 
only too well for their peace of mind ; and, make 
no mistake about it, beneath all their blustering, 
vain-glorious talk of invincible armies and shining 
swords and all the rest of their high-faluting non- 
sense, lies the brooding disquieting knowledge that 
until they have beaten our Navy they cannot win 
this war. 

Some day the Curtain will rise ; that is certain, 
be the day near or far-off. And the scene on which 
it rises will be a happy scene of a broad and pleasant 
country-side ; of rich fields ripening in the sunshine, 
of peaceful homes, and flourishing industries ; of a 
contented, self-respecting people who have learnt 
through the chastening of war to sweep away for 
ever the old follies of inequalities of a former age 
and to share with one another the happy fruits of 



Victory. 



God Save the King. 



Printed in Great Britain by Wyman & Sons Ltd., London and Reading 



